A mock drill at a Kashmiri school.
SRINAGAR, INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR – As an alarm bell trills, a firefighter rushes toward a building as auxiliary police start evacuating people trapped inside.
But there is no fire. This is just a mock drill in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital. A variety of organizations here have been organizing such drills in order to generate awareness among the public and encourage people to be prepared for the region’s frequent disasters.
This drill, carried out by the Urban Earthquake Vulnerability Reduction Project, a U.N. Development Program project, devised four scenarios to help employees at the office complex of the divisional commissioner of Kashmir prepare for a fire.
“The purpose of such programs is to generate awareness among masses, and we want to improve on our shortcomings,” says Aamir Ali, head of Disaster Management Kashmir, one government body in charge of disaster preparation and response here.
In the first scenario, one of the employees calls the Fire and Emergency Services, FES, and a firefighter arrives within minutes.
In the second scenario, volunteers with the Civil Defence Organization, an auxiliary police service in Kashmir that focuses on training civilians for attacks and disasters, rescue people from the building. They tie stretchers to the staircase to rescue people from the second floor to prepare for if the stairs ever catch fire. Firefighters douse the flames while others try to start a generator and look for a nearby water source.
In scenario three, Civil Defence volunteers try another rescue method. They tie rope around one person, and volunteers both inside and outside the building firmly hold the two ends of the rope until the person is rescued.
In the fourth scenario, participants learn how to use fire extinguishers.
Officials say that Kashmir is not as prepared for its frequent natural disasters, which have included landslides, floods, flash floods, avalanches, cloudbursts, forest fires and pest attacks during the last two decades, as other states in India. In order to prepare, a coalition of government departments have implemented new programs to try to educate the public. Experts say Kashmir should also learn from past incidents here and in other parts of the country to avoid the same mistakes. Nongovernmental organizations, NGOs, have also joined in helping to prepare Kashmiris for natural disasters.
Kashmir faces innumerable natural disasters, but disaster management is a relatively new concept in Kashmir, says G.M. Dar, head of the Disaster Management Center.
The Indian government began to develop the Disaster Management Center in 1995 under the Institute of Management and Public Administration, IMPA. The Jammu and Kashmir state government formally established the center in 2001 to train members of civil society, professional bodies and NGOs in disaster management. It then established Disaster Management Kashmir in 2006 to prepare for and respond to disasters. The Indian government also introduced the Disaster Management Act in 2005 and the National Disaster Management Act in 2007.
But experts say that Kashmir is not as prepared for natural disasters as other states in India, even though most of the region lies in one of India’s five earthquake zones.
“Compared to other states, we are far behind,” Dar says. “Despite our strategic location, we’ve not made much headway in disaster management.”
He says that even Uttarakhand, a state that is just five years old, has an entire ministry for disaster management.
“Kashmir that has a long history of disasters has no such plan,” Dar says.
Since the last major earthquake here in 2005, the Disaster Management Center has been organizing awareness programs and mock drills in collaboration with various NGOs and Civil Defence, Dar says. Disaster Management Kashmir and FES also help carry out drills now, too.
But Dar says more needs to be done. He says that one of the first steps to take is to make sure that all building projects keep disasters in mind, starting with government buildings.
“Keeping in view the vulnerability here, we need to be highly prepared,” he says. “We’ve lost traditional wisdom with regard to constructions. Building codes are to be adhered to, and it requires strong legal binding. First, these codes have to be implemented in government buildings, then only people will follow.”
He says that the government should also strengthen local communities in their disaster response protocols because they are the first respondents.
“If they are aware about do’s and don’ts, they will act accordingly,” he says. “Disasters will keep on coming. We need to reduce vulnerability, and training is the first chapter.”
Dar says the government should also do more to coordinate disaster management at the district level, starting with establishing a disaster management center in each district.
“It would go a long way in generating awareness among masses at grassroots level,” he says. “A media manager should be appointed in every district. [The] role of media manager becomes vital during disasters, especially due to lot of confusion around. A press briefing at stipulated time during disasters would be of great help.”
Dar says that government-sponsored awareness programs have included safety programs in various high schools and higher secondary schools, which teach skills such as how to use fire extinguishers. He says programs have also been organized for doctors, imams, engineers, masons, students, mass media and people living on the national highway.
“But there are no follow-ups,” he says.
Dar says that Kashmir also needs to learn lessons from its past and from disasters in other states.
He says that residents of Gujarat, a state in western India, learned their lesson after an earthquake in 2001 and built earthquake-resistant structures afterward. But he says that residents of Uri, a town in western Jammu and Kashmir that was leveled by the 2005 earthquake, didn’t rebuild with earthquake-resistant structures, except in special places where NGOs interfered.
“No monitoring about earthquake-resistant structures was there,” he says.
Dar says it’s important to expect the unexpected. He says that there was no snow in Waltango, a village in Kashmir, for 15 years.
“As such, people had followed the construction patterns as in plains,” he says.
Then an avalanche hit it in 2005, killing hundreds of people in southern Kashmir.
“Consequently, they were caught unaware during [the] snow avalanche,” he says. “Traditional [houses] had paved [the] way for modern constructions, which were totally lost in the avalanche.”
He says that even after the disaster, the village didn’t learn its lesson while rebuilding.
“Most people didn’t go for disaster-resistant structures,” he says. “Soil wasn’t properly surveyed while rehabilitating people. [The] government made houses on plains, and there were landslides.”
Latief Ahmad, 45, a mason, attended a six-day Disaster Management Kashmir training for masons in building earthquake-resistant structures in 2009. He says such trainings should be more widespread so that people become aware of them.
“Earlier, we had no such concepts, but the training has broadened our vision,” he says. “Such trainings should be continued so that more and more people get benefited.”
Ali says it doesn’t cost much more to make structures earthquake-resistant.
“It would just cost 8 to 10 percent extra to make earthquake-resistant structures,” Ali says. “Generally, structures here are non-engineered and that makes [the] role of masons crucial. We need to train them so that they carry forward the message to the community.”
Dar says that people must take the vulnerability of the area into account while considering constructions projects and use locally available materials. He says a cloudburst, a sudden heavy rainfall, in Ladakh, a region in Kashmir, last year had devastating consequences.
“It is a rare incident,” he says. “It might have been due to climate change, followed by flash floods. As the riversides were abandoned, land was easily available. People constructed houses, and those houses were washed away during the disaster.”
After the 2005 earthquake, NGOs also became involved in generating awareness to help people prepare for disasters.
Indo-Global Social Service Society, IGSSS, a national NGO, implemented an emergency response strategy that sets a timeline for disaster response. It also trains communities in disaster response.
“We train community people as they are the first respondents during disasters,” says Yasir Qureshi, an officer at the IGSSS Kashmir office. “Once they are trained and mobilized, losses due to disasters can be minimized, if not prevented.”
He says that IGSSS has also organized awareness programs for school children and counseling for disaster victims.
“Apart from community-based disaster preparedness, IGSSS conducted psycho-social counseling in 2005 for earthquake-affected people in our target areas,” says Saima Gul, another IGSSS officer.
Gul says IGSSS offered vocational training and focused on earthquake-resistant structures in these areas.
Another organization, Center for Environment Education, CEE, Himalaya, which aims to increase environmental awareness, focuses more on prevention than response.
“There is a paradigm shift from [a] crisis-management approach to [a] risk-management approach,” says Abdhesh Gangwar, CEE’s regional director of the north and northeastern regions.
He says that the new approach aims to avoid risks and manage them if a situation arises. He says that community-based disaster preparedness is a major component of CEE’s earthquake response program in Kashmir.
“Interventions have been made to address school education, create community awareness, organize mock drills on relevant skills and conduct capacity-building through trainings,” he says.
He says that CEE is running its campaign to reduce risks in 2,500 schools across the Kashmir Valley.
“This includes awareness about natural and man-made disasters, necessary do’s and don’ts during and after disasters, rapid visual assessment of school building and surroundings for risks, mock drills on emergency evacuation, fire fighting and primary first aid,” he says. “Selected schools are preparing disaster management plans, disaster response committees, including students and teachers being formed in these schools as the task force to respond during emergencies.”
He says CEE is also running programs in villages, where it is emphasizing sustainable livelihoods.
“The livelihoods put pressure on local resources adding to fragility of ecosystems,” he says. “As such, it is important to have sustainable livelihoods. We are promoting alternative technologies that are non-farm-based and complement to existing traditional livelihoods in the area.”
CEE has trained villagers in 10 villages in alternative livelihoods such as mushroom cultivation and apiculture, he says.
