Getting ready!

Disaster management training programme gets under way:

The Uttarakhand government with disaster management committee has started a disaster management-training program to combat natural calamities in the state. Around 10,000 people including home guards, police and rapid action force personnel will be trained.

The training program started on December 1 and will go on till April 2011. To mitigate any natural calamity, the home guards are undergoing disaster prevention and management training like rock climbing, rappelling, river rafting. S.S Martolia, the coordinator of disaster management committee, said every person should have the knowledge about how to deal with difficult situations. "The main motive of this training is that we want every person from child to adult to senior citizen to be aware of forthcoming disasters. They should have knowledge about it so that in disastrous situation they can help the injured person," said Martolia. The training program has boosted up the confidence and moral of home guards and also brought positive change in their thinking about humanity. "We are learning that if we are able to save someone's life then we would think we have learnt something. Here we are learning rappelling, rock climbing etc. Suppose some accident occurred so how to bring injured person from ditch to highway and how to save lives during flood, have been taught to us," said Om Prakash, trainee home guard. According to Deepak Martolia, an instructor, management committee will prepare a data of all home guards so that they can be immediately informed about the problem.

"Our Uttarakhand comes under sensitive earthquake zone and it is calamity prone State. It comes under zone 4 and 5. Here the chances of flood are also very high, so keeping all these factors in mind we are preparing a data of our trainees to look out who is living in which district. So that we can inform them on phone about the disaster and they can immediately reach the disastrous area and help people of that area," said Martolia.