From its mundane work of gathering data, issuing guidelines, and cobbling together disaster management plans, the State Emergency Operations Centre (SEOC) under the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) shifts gear to a state of heightened activity with the onset of the monsoon.
And when the emergency mode is on, following an orange or red alert — indicating very heavy to extremely heavy rainfall in a 24-hour span — for two days in a row, it turns into a war room of sorts to gear up for a potential disaster.
The SEOC will bring all Grade-I officers from around 46 departments, including those of central agencies and the armed forces, to work together once a warning is issued. The process gets under way when a multi-tasking officer on duty takes up the weather feed from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) with the hazard analyst on duty.
The officer will then run it past a hazard and risk analyst and a multi-sectoral team, including meteorologists, for their take on it.
The team deployed at the SEOC will swing into action and hazard warning are issued based on their reading of the weather forecast. The level of the warning will dictate the type of standard operating procedure to be in place.
There are three types of warnings - L1 (the level of disaster that can be managed within the capabilities and resources at the district level), L2 (this signifies the disaster situations that require assistance and active mobilsation of resources at the State level and deployment of State-level agencies for disaster management), and L3 (this corresponds to a nearly catastrophic situation or a large-scale disaster that overwhelms the State and district authorities).
This will be followed by the dissemination of warnings to different levels from top IAS officers and Ministers to grama panchayat or municipal ward levels and even specific warnings to the differently abled, guest workers, and on livestock and the like.
A fusion centre, which is at the heart of the SEOC, facilitates interdepartmental coordination. It collates, amalgamates, and filters info for dissemination.
Various agencies step in from this point onwards to carry out actions as prescribed in the Orange Book of Disaster Management, SOPs, and emergency support plan prepared by the KSDMA and revised annually. It has ascribed specific responsibilities and roles to individual agencies involved in disaster management operations.
Besides the feeds from the IMD, weather inputs from a host of international agencies are reviewed by the SEOC before issuing warnings. Inputs from agencies such as the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, Geological Survey of India, and the Central Water Commission are analysed for hazard assessment and for sounding specific levels of threat and action.
If the situation demands intervention of armed forces and central agencies, an officer in the rank of Additional Chief Secretary or disaster management commissioner will reach out to these agencies.
“Unlike cyclones, the track of which is known in advance, there will only be a window of about three to six hours to act in normal emergency situations during monsoon-related calamities,” says Sekhar L.Kuriakose, Member-Secretary, KSDMA.
