By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday inaugurated the three-days long 2nd BIMSTEC Disaster Management Exercise-2020 (BIMSTEC DMEx-2020) hosted by National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) here.
The three-day exercise will be held in Bhubaneswar and Puri with the theme: ‘A cultural heritage site that suffers severe damage in the Earthquake & Flooding or Storm’.
NDRF Director General SN Pradhan, State DGP Abhay, Chief Secretary, representatives from five member countries and other dignitaries were present at the inaugural ceremony.
The participants of five countries — Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Nepal are participating in this exercise. Meanwhile, seven countries are the members of BIMSTEC, Bhutan and Thailand are not participating in the exercise due to travel advisories issued by their governments.
The objective of the exercise is to test the existing emergency procedures for notification, preparedness and emergency response, during a major earthquake and flood scenarios. This exercise will also provide an opportunity to enhance the coordination and cooperation involving multi-agency operations in an earthquake, flooding and storm surge.
An exercise village has been set up at Ramchandi in Puri where simulation on aquatic disaster response with special attention to the damage to heritage site will take place as part of the exercise. This will provide real-time scenarios so that in times of disaster, a proper plan for response and coordination among member nation can be executed in multi-agency scenarios.
