Over 95% distress calls received at war room in 36 hrs resolved in record time

KOLKATA: With Cyclone Yaas, the Bengal government took its disaster management preparedness to the next level as the top administration were successful in not only disseminating information about common people's woes received at the state Secretariat by attending distress calls to the lowest level, but also ensured the success of resolving almost 95.77 per cent of the issues within a stipulated time of three hours.

The state-of-the-art control rooms — one at Nabanna and the other at adjacent Upanna — received as many as 1,584 phone calls at three dedicated helpline numbers of the state government for disaster management till Wednesday evening since Tuesday 7 am.

Out of this, issues raised by 1517 callers, mainly from coastal and riverine regions, were addressed and each of them was provided with necessary assistance within three hours after their phone calls were received at the state Secretariat.

A report of the state Disaster Management department shows that the "action taken report" was uploaded by concerned officers at the grassroots level along with relevant documents in 95.77 per cent cases.

The calls that were received at the helpline numbers 1070, 22143526 and 22140028 were mainly requests for relief materials, food, drinking water and house damage from the cyclone-hit areas.

With a robust mechanism set up by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, 24 terminals equipped with modern gadgets were set up at the control room at Upanna. During super cyclone Amphan, there were only 10 sets of phones to receive distress calls and the information also had to be shared with officers at the grassroots level over the phone, SMS or WhatsApp manually.

This time during cyclone Yaas, as many as 25 telephone operators under the supervision of five officers received distress calls from across the state and immediately keyed in the problem along with the details of the person in crisis in the computerized system.

"Within two minutes time after uploading the request, the concerned Block Development Officer and the District Magistrate received the task that needs to be addressed within three hours," said an officer of the Disaster Management department. If the 24 terminals remain engaged, then there is also provision for the calls to get automatically transferred to the control room at Nabanna though it was mainly for coordination between the state and district headquarters. Nine persons, including five telephone operators, worked in each shift at the control room in Nabanna.

In case of house damage, the caller and his or her family members were initially taken to safe shelters and in case of requirement of food, medicines, etc, the same was provided to them on an immediate basis.

Officers of the Disaster Management department, who were working for the past eight days to ensure the safety of people in view of Cyclone Yaas, have so far ensured Rs 8.30 crore as relief contingency (including Rs 1 crore each for most affected East Midnapore and South 24-Parganas on Wednesday), 8.85 lakh tarpaulins, 2.32 lakh garments and 4800 MT rice.

At the same time, a giant digital screen has also been recently set up at the control room at Nabanna from where the Chief Minister monitored the situation, on which multiple outputs of live footage from vulnerable areas have been telecast. The CCTV that was installed at Sagar was damaged in the cyclone on Wednesday morning.