As part of the State Level Mock Exercise on Earthquake Disaster to be held on October 12, 2023, the Meghalaya State Disaster Management Authority (MSDMA) and Revenue and Disaster Management Department in collaboration with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) today organised a ‘table top exercise’ for all stakeholders.
Representatives of all districts took part either in-house or virtually.
Sanjay Goyal, Commissioner and Secretary in the Revenue and Disaster Management Department, said that today was a precursor to the mock exercise that is meant to help in familiarising all stakeholders of their roles and duties on the day of the mock drill and also in ensuring its successful conduct.
With Meghalaya being a very sensitive and vulnerable region to earthquakes, the prime focus, apart from other disasters, has always been on preparedness towards the eventuality of any earthquake. Goyal urged the stakeholders to take the entire exercise seriously and to test themselves as to how much the state as a whole is prepared in tackling any such an eventuality.
The exercise was chaired by Goyal in the presence of Maj Gen (retd) Sudhir Bahl, senior consultant at the NDMA.
The aims and objectives of a mock exercise are to review the disaster management plan and associated SOPs of the state and its districts, as well as individual disaster management plans of each department, highlight the roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders as per incident response system (IRS), ensure coordination among all emergency support functions (ESFs), generate public awareness and to identify gaps, if any, in the resources, communications, response capabilities, etc.
