Mega mock drill on quake preparedness in Haryana tomorrow

CHANDIGARH : The Haryana government will hold a mega mock drill in coordination with the national disaster management authority (NDMA) in all districts of the state to check preparedness for earthquake on December 21 at 10 am.

On Tuesday, finance minister Captain Abhimanyu, who also holds the portfolio of revenue and disaster management, told mediapersons that sirens would be sounded in all district headquarters following which, special teams of different departments, including health department, will undertake a simulation of rescue and relief works.

“A massive earthquake would be depicted by blowing of sirens across the state following which, the disaster response mechanism would be activated to respond to situations emerging out of the said depiction at state and district levels,” he elaborated.

“The same would be held at selected institutions — residential, commercial and government buildings — in all 22 districts of the state,” he said, adding that the drill would also be held at Haryana main secretariat in Sector 1 and new civil secretariat in Sector 17 here.

To a question pertaining to workforce and equipment to be used for the drill, Capt Abhimanyu, who was accompanied by senior officials of the state government and NDMA, said that the composite task forces would comprise the Army, Air Force (IAF), national disaster response force (NDRF), NDMA, paramilitary forces, civil defence, state police and medical teams, besides teams of local civic bodies.

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A massive earthquake would be depicted by blowing sirens across the state following which, the disaster response mechanism would be activated to respond.

CAPT ABHIMANYU, Haryana revenue and disaster management minister

He said that it was for the first time that an exercise of this scale was being conducted in Haryana as earlier in 2013, a major exercise was conducted by NDMA involving Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh, but only Panchkula district from Haryana had been involved in the drill.

He said that all stakeholders have already held training and workshops since the past several weeks while on Wednesday, a table top exercise will be conducted by painting scenario related to the earthquake in a sequential manner.

“All stakeholders in the district and state would respond accordingly, which would be conducted through video conference in which, the district incident response teams would take part,” he added.