The Times of India               20.08.2013

Pimpri Chinchwad civic body to finetune disaster readiness with tips from civil defence corps

PUNE: The Civil Defence Corps (CDC) conducted a mock drill at the headquarters of the PimpriChinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) on Saturday to test the civic administration's disaster preparedness plan.

"At least two 30-feet-long aluminium ladders must be installed on each floor of the main building so that people inside the building can be evacuated in case of disasters like fire. The civic body must also keep adequate number of ropes at the building which can be used for sending able-bodied people to safety," George Swamy, divisional warden of CDC, said.

Swamy said that PCMC employees will be trained to keep themselves safe, minimize injuries and take care of disabled in case of a disaster at the building.

Swamy said that he held discussions with municipal commissioner Shrikar Pardeshi after the mock drill about the safety measures needed at the main building.

Pardeshi said the mock drill was held at the main office building on the backdrop of the fire at the Mantralaya in Mumbai earlier this year. "Disaster management law, 2005, states that mock drills need to be undertaken to check if we are well-equipped to face any disasters. The required response time was three minutes but we were only able to evacuate the building in five minutes. There were about 650 people inside the building," he said.

"We need to make an effort to reduce the response time," he added. There are four staircases in the building but only two of them were used by the people to come out of the building. So there is a need for using the other two staircases too for quicker evacuation from the building", he said

The mock drill began was held on Saturday afternoon. As the mock drill began on Saturday afternoon,

On Saturday afternoon, ambulances and fire engines of the civic body reached the spot to begin mock rescue operations. Some civic officials were given the responsibility of floor marshals to supervise the evacuation from a specific floor of the building. The firemen demonstrated various rescue methods during disasters like jumping from the first floor onto the jumping sheet held by the other firemen on the ground and by coming down from the second floor with the help of rope.

Officials of CDC, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) battalion from Talegaon and police were observers during the mock drill.