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With no contingency plans or equipment, is Gurgaon a Nepal-in-waiting?

The District Disaster Management Authority Cell has no equipment, no contingency plan for evacuation and rescue in the city.

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Gurgaon has only two fire stations with almost 15 vehicles and around 40 staff members.
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Saturday’s earthquake turned Kathmandu into a ghost town. A city that was home to tourists from all over the world a few days back is now left with thousands dead and lakhs displaced. 

Kathmandu neither has high-rise buildings, nor is the population of the size of any Indian city, yet the devastation and loss is unfathomable. Kathmandu got devastated, but Gurgaon got shaken too.
 
Perhaps for the first time since its metamorphosis into a city synonymous to great Indian urban awakening from relatively less known suburb of the national capital, people sitting in their 20th storey houses feared the inevitable.
 
We all know that if an earthquake with the magnitude of above seven hits Gurgaon, the city will turn into cemetery within minutes and to make the matters worse, the state, till date, has no contingency plan for evacuation and rescue of the people.
 
With almost 10 lakh people sleeping at night and nearly 20 lakh people working during the day, one can easily imagine loss of lives that would occur if anything of this sort hits Gurgaon.
 
Now let’s know whether the Gurgaon administration or any other private players who have great stakes in the city are prepared to take on any such situation.
 
The answer is a whopping NO. The District Disaster Management Authority Cell (DDMAC) that was constituted back in 2007 has no plans for the evacuation and rescue in the city. The officers of the cell cool their heels sitting in their AC offices with no clues about the number of high rise buildings in the city, areas which are prone to massive loss, and types of the structures that are being constructed in Gurgaon.
 
“They do nothing. If anything happens, nobody can help this city and believe me, the damage would be beyond imagination. Here in Gurgaon, this so called cell has nothing. No plan, no equipment and the worst part is, the state government hasn’t even added National Building Corporation Code (NBCC) to the Central government’s plan they claim, they follow which enables the time to time checking of the structures that are being built by the builders in the city,” said a senior official in one of the research institutes of the city.
 
One can easily imagine the incompetence of the department from the fact that in eight years, it hasn’t even prepared the data of the structures being made in Gurgaon and nor it has identified any dangerous zones in the city where rescue operations can be carried at a swift pace if anything happens.
 
Despite the Deputy Commissioner being the head of the Cell, the department is fully dependent on fire department for the data of buildings in the city.
 
Now let’s see how equipped our fire department is
 
Gurgaon has only two fire stations with almost 15 vehicles and around 40 staff members. None of the fire tending vehicles in Gurgaon can reach to any of the high rise in Gurgaon for the rescue of the people.
 
“Unlike Delhi Fire Service, we are equipped with old vehicles with no state of art infrastructure necessary to carry out rescue operations,” said a fire department official.
 
Gurgaon must be banking upon NDRF, but the city needs to understand that when earthquake will strike, NDRF will rescue people in the capital and not in its much loved satellite town.
 
The DDMAC has no equipment either and government too seems to be in no mood to provide them with a few.
 
For example: MCG had asked the government to buy the disaster rescue equipment which included smoke masks, automatic Distress Signal Unit, Diamond cutter, Double sledge hammer, Sewage entry rescue kit and many other equipment. A total estimate of 65 crore was prepared by the MCG but the government till date, is yet to give the permission to buy anything.
 
Hospitals in the city always play crucial role when it comes to rescue operations and cities with good medical establishments are likely to carry out rescue operations successfully.
 
Thankfully Gurgaon has plenty of good hospitals and thanks to them, it’s become one of the most sought after medical tourism destinations in India.
 
“But unfortunately, majority of these hospitals would prove useless in the time of crises. Many of them are multi-storey which means that they too would require the rescue. The remaining are located near high-rises and it would be very difficult to reach to them if an earthquake strikes. I believe a solid contingency plan needs to be worked out if we want to curtail the losses otherwise the city wouldn’t survive the quake,” said an expert.


This story was first published on iamin.in. For more stories from across India, visit their website.

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