Mr. Vinod Bhardawaj is Chief Civil Defense and south west district disaster management project officer. As a disaster management project officer he handles the events and programs related to disaster management held in the district, under the chairmanship of District Magistrate, who are the controllers and chairperson of civil defence. He has also taught more than 2.5L children.
The civil defence was established in 1968 under parliament act for establishing peace and prosperity in the country and work for the welfare of civilians. After the war, attention was turned toward civil defense in the event of war, and the Air Raid Precautions Committee (ARP) was established in 1924 to investigate ways for ensuring the protection of civilians from the danger of air-raids.
Disaster Management Authority can be defined as the organization and management of resources and responsibilities for dealing with all humanitarian aspects of emergencies, in particular preparedness, response and recovery in order to lessen the impact of disasters. Whenever any earthquake will occur or any tragedy takes place, Disaster Management Authority that is, the rescue team will always be prepared to help people.
Disaster management in India refers to the conservation of lives and property during a natural or man-made disaster. Disaster management plans are multi-layered and are planned to address issues such as floods, hurricanes, fires, mass failure of utilities and the rapid spread of disease. India is especially vulnerable to natural disasters because of its unique geo-climatic conditions, having recurrent floods, droughts, cyclones, earthquakes and landslides.
In the interview Mr. Vinod told about the rescue team operates from collectorates (a district under the jurisdiction of a collector). The Disaster Management Act, 2005 has been enacted as the central Act to deal with the management of disasters and which was enforced in 2009. This demonstration visualized a three-level Disaster Management structure in India at National (NDRF), States (SDRF) and District levels. The District Magistrate is the chairperson of the district disaster management and under him the programs or events related to disaster management are held.
He also told about that NDRFA takes action when any mass destruction happens, for example in Kerala floods, Jammu and Kashmir floods, etc. It also helps its neighboring countries, for example, earthquake in Nepal.
When asked about the toll free number of Disaster Management Authority, he said, “The toll free number is supervised under the control of government and 1077 is the number”.
He also shared one of his experience when he helped a person by giving him CPR, that is, Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, an emergency procedure that combines chest compressions often with artificial ventilation in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore spontaneous blood circulation and breathing in a person who is in cardiac arrest.
Recent Projects
- Train schools about disaster management programs.
- Train women about disaster management as well as provide self-defence training.
- Train every community of the society.
- Look after the disaster management institutes and to fulfill its needs.
Mr. Vinod also suggested that every government authority should travel with trained civil defence person and government offices should install trained medically civil defence person. He also added, “I would also like to give a message to all the masses that if any incident happens then school or college students or any person who has taken the training or attended any programme related to disaster management should first help themselves and then save those people who need help. I just want to say that be aware and have knowledge about these things.” He further added, “We even provide these trainings free of cost as it is for a noble cause and it is open 24×7. So I request people to come and take training from us.”
(*Interviewed by Divansha Mehta who is Student of BJMC-TIPS, I.P. University, Dwarka, Delhi)
