Shillong, March 20: East Khasi Hills deputy commissioner RM Kurbah on Thursday emphasised the importance of having disaster management plans at the family and community level besides urging people to refrain from violating the building byelaws.

Addressing media persons on the mock drill exercise, Kurbah said the whole exercise was conducted to ensure preparedness to face any kinds of disaster especially earthquake keeping in mind Meghalaya falling under zone 5, which is the highest seismic zone in the whole world.

“So we have to be prepared. We are happy today the whole process went off very well,” she added.

Kurbah, who is also the chairperson of the district disaster management (DDMA), also stressed the need to create more awareness at the village level, offices and schools on how to handle in case of earthquake.

She said every family should also have a disaster management plan of their own. “Should anything happen, they should be taught what would be the first step to take in a disaster situation. You have to protect yourself first (like taking shelter under a table) .That is why we need training as these things you dont learn them just like that.”

According to her, a family should be trained to stay safe besides ensuring supplies of foood, water and medicines and clothes that will last at least 78 hours till the district administration gears up to extend the necessary help.

The DC also appealed to all dorbar shnongs to also come up with their own disaster management plan.

“We need to identify a place for relief camp – this every locality should have. They should have a disaster management plan in place,” she said.

On the construction of buildings, Kurbah said there is need to sensitize people, who are building new houses to have proper planning and to refrain from violating the buildng byelaws.

“We are living in a zone 5, which is unsafe to build any building as such. There are building byelaws and people should not violate them and they should get their building plans vetted by an engineer is a specialist of this kind of things.
People may think this is intruding their privacy but you should think you are exposing  your family or neighbours should your building collapsed,” she said adding “It really takes change of mindset it is not doing for other people, it is doing for yourself first as if your building is not safe, your building is not safe.”

Earlier, the mock drill exercise was conducted in presence of NDMA officials.

The situation created was based on an earthquake situation of 8.3 ritcher scale.

Kurbah said the district administration had identified eight sites.

“They include landslides, fire incident in one school, petrol pump and we had some other incidents like market place in polo – things like that we had set up just to get this idea of how prepared are we,”she stated.

“What we learned today is basically communication how we pass through the information right from the base when things happened upto when information received. We take it that when incident happened there is no line communication except for wireless message through the MPRO and also various other means if we have in place. Accordingly, today we have used one line from MPRO where we conduct all exercises and received information in this room and thereafter planning and logistic sections designed and disseminate information to the incident commander, who in turn sent the teams of ambulance and fire fighters,” she further added.

Also Read: Meghalaya’s Khasi Hills at the heart of a major reptilian discovery

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