On a rainy day, residents of Kaitha village in Kendrapara district of Odisha are busy carrying out a Tsunami-response mock drill, which they do twice a year to maintain their ‘Tsunami-ready’ status — an honour they have got by practising the same to protect themselves and their loved ones in case of natural calamities.
Twenty-four villages of the state will be declared Tsunami-ready by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO) in Hyderabad on December 26, two decades after the 2004 devastating Tsunami that hit them.
Of these villages, three are in Kendrapara, five in Balasore, four each in Bhadrak, Jagatsinghpur, Puri, and Ganjam. The IOC-UNESCO has also renewed the Tsunami-ready recognition of Noliasahi (Jagatsinghpur) and Venkatraipur (Ganjam) which were recognized in 2020, taking the number of such villages to 26 in the state which has a coastline of 480 kms spread across six coastal districts.
Talking to The Statesman, T Srinivasa Kumar, Head, Secretariat, ICG, IOTWMS, UNESCO asserted that the recognition is based on 12 global standard indicators, and 36 such IOC-UNESCO certified communities are being added to the list in the Indian ocean, out of which 24 lie in India, while 12 lie in Indonesia.
He added that The Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (ICG/IOTWMS) manages tsunami-risk-related affairs across 27 Member States with access to the Indian Ocean basin and was established in 2005 as a response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
There are three pillars of IOTWS that includes Risk assessment, Detection of Tsunami, warnings and Community awareness and preparedness. Out of which Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) takes care of detecting tsunami through world class equipment and it sends the alerts to the respective state disaster management which further spreads it to the communities living in the vulnerable areas, Srinivasa elaborated.
The Kaitha village, located about 150 kms from Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha has several volunteers who are trained by the ODRF, and have knowledge of providing first aid, CPR and other life saving techniques which they utilize in case of a tsunami or cyclone.
The village also houses a building having all the necessary equipment such as ropes, life jackets among other equipment which are used in case of emergency for the safe evacuation of citizens.
Odisha also has installed 122 Alert sirens at various locations throughout the coast which are used for alerting the citizens. These towers are self sufficient which run on renewable energy sources and can operate in the bad weather too.
The state has a dedicated centre for spreading awareness about the natural disasters such as Tsunami, Cyclone among others in Bhubaneswar.
“To safeguard the people, the EWDS project was undertaken. We dispense the information through Digital mobile radio, Alert tower sirens, mass message system; satellite based mobile data voice terminals and using Universal Communication Interface systems”, Lipso Ranjan Parida, Project Engineer Early Warning Dissemination System (EWDS) told The Statesman.
Dr Ajay Kumar, INCOS scientist said, “We warn the states about the probability of it being hit by a disaster through continuous and real time data monitoring. Based on the data, INCOS sent warnings to the state as well as district centers as well as to all the 27 member states in the Indian Ocean”.
As part of its outreach programme, INCOS also trains the state disaster response force officials as well as district level officials,” Kumar added.