Public Participation in Disaster Management

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction talks about local government’s response to any disaster. Ideally the first respondents to any disaster should be the local people because of their proximity, stake and knowledge of the disaster. Depending on the severity of the disaster the 2nd and 3rd tier of disaster help and relief to be roped in.

This has been my experience in the last few days of handling flooding disaster in Kinwat subdivision. Because of continuous and heavy rains in Kinwat and also elsewhere, the Painganga river on whose banks Kinwat Taluka and Kinwat city is located, was overflowing. After several years, the Kharbi bridge over painganga river connecting Kinwat city to Umarkhed in Yavatmal district was totally submerged. The last time this happened was in 2006 as per the local media people. The sight was disturbing.

Because of such copious waters flowing, the banks flooded and water gushed into low lying localities. Around 200 families were shifted to temporary shelters. Here the first to respond was the urban local body who mobilised the people in such low lying locality to shift to safe shelters. The President of the ULB, the councillors jumped into action. The upcoming local body elections gave them enough self-motivation to do the needful. Good for officers like us.

Then another call came from the remotest village of Kinwat Taluka – Apparaopeth, where the local people’s representative told that the village lake is about to breach because of a small leakage. He also told that he’s taking some 30 boys to go and plug that leakage with sand bags. Meanwhile the Deputy engineer of irrigation department and local revenue officers also reached the spot and they worked together to plug such dangerous leak in the lake averting breakdown of the dam and thus flooding the village downstream.

Then one more message in the day said that, some 10 cows and livestock are stuck in an island like situation because of continuous rains. We told them since to get a boat from District head quarters will take lot of time, the best course of action will be to take help of local swimmers and with their help bring the livestock to safety. The local revenue officer coordinated the rescue operation and brought some 10 cows to safety by end of the day.

During pre-monsoon preparedness meeting at Sub divisional level, we had instructed all the department HODs like PWD, Electrical, Irrigation, Health to make their own Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) and communication plan consisting of mobile numbers of local field level functionaries and share it to each Gram panchayats. The departments did their due diligence, took precautions, checked the status of their roads, bridges, culverts etc.

This has been an important lesson in Disaster Management ie involving the urban and rural local bodies, civil society and people in disaster management. They have to be trained, motivated to be first respondents to local disasters. Periodic disaster mock drills of such stakeholders to be conducted to train them. Wherever needed heavy lifting to be done.