Mumbai: July 25, 10.50 am, LBS Marg, Ghatkopar. A team of Mumbai Police personnel, on their routine rounds, hears a deafening boom behind them. The senior officer orders the driver to take a U-turn, but the driver is already turning the SUV around. The team work their phones and the radio, calling their police station, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the Mumbai Fire Brigade.
At the Mumbai Police Commissionerate control room at Crawford Market, a constable answers the phone, expecting it to be yet another motorist stuck in traffic or a policeman with a routine update. But the near-hysterical voice makes him straighten up and reach for his pen. He scribbles furiously in his notepad, indicating with his eyes to his colleague at the next desk that this sounded big. By now, that constable knows: he is monitoring the wireless set and has just heard from Ghatkopar’s police station. A residential building called Siddhi Sai has collapsed; people are probably trapped in it.
Meanwhile, at the Mumbai Fire Brigade control room in Byculla, an alert from the hotline with the police has come in. Almost simultaneously, the helpline phone rings and a scared-sounding citizen tells the officer that a building has collapsed. The staffers on duty spends seconds ascertaining that it is the same incident, then one them dials the fire station nearest the disaster, the other calls up the BMC’s Disaster Management Cell (DMC) control room at CST.
In the DMC, it is a flurry of action. As details come in from hotlines and other sources, staffers pull up Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) references, then maps that show the hospitals and ambulance services nearest the site and access roads. Calls are made to the Fire Brigade, to check if more rescue workers are needed, and to the Traffic Police to ensure that access roads are freed and traffic re-routed.
As more reports come in, everyone is clear: this is a big one. Senior officials across agencies are already discussing whether the National Disaster Response Force needs to be brought in. This is clearly beyond the ‘smaller’ Level 1 disasters, for example, a fire within one apartment or an overturned lorry causing a traffic jam. In less than an hour, the decision is taken: this is a Level 4, which means bringing in the NDRF. A call goes out to Mantralaya, the state secretariat, seeking the go-ahead to bring in the Central government force. (Level 5 is the top of the scale, with calamities like the 2005 post-cloudburst flooding in Mumbai. Situations that need the armed forces to be brought in, like the Mumbai terror attack, require the state’s government to take the decision.)
NDRF vans are soon speeding to Ghatkopar from their base in Andheri. The team re-checks their equipment en route to make sure everything is working properly: from sophisticated sensors and thermal cameras to old-school ropes and harnesses. Handlers keep their sniffer dogs calm and alert.
At the site, they quickly get briefed by the other agencies present, make their assessment of the situation, and their senior-most officer takes command. The team fans out to do their jobs, using their specialised equipment and canine assistants to search for survivors, securing anything that looks precarious, going in to rescue who they can.
This is just the beginning of the response to a disaster. The actual operations could go on for hours, even days, until the last life is saved, or worse, the last body brought out. When multiple agencies are involved, as they were in the collapse of the Siddhi Sai building in July, the task requires precise coordination, adherence to SOPs, and a clear chain of authority.
First responders
On July 25, the police were first on the scene. This usually happens, partly because most citizens in situations like this reflexively dial the 100 helpline; also, the police are usually the closest to any calamity by virtue of them being the most spread-out on a day-to-day basis.
Often, by the time the police get to the site, ordinary citizens are already helping, taking the injured to hospitals, attempting to bring out victims. The police begin by taking command of the situation. They secure the site, identify where they need to place barricades or personnel, and move citizen volunteers away so that rescue professionals can access the site. Aside from crowd control, they must also manage traffic, to ensure response vehicles can come and go.
“Anything that can be done without the professional expertise of other agencies is done immediately,” Joint Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Deven Bharti says. “We also try to save anyone we can.” In the absence of equipment or expertise, they rely on local resources, such as internal firefighting equipment. Police Commissioner D.D. Padsalgikar says, “We also need to make sure the roads are clear for these agencies to reach the spot, as well as to take the injured to the nearest hospitals. At such times, traffic management is not limited to the traffic police.”
Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Amitesh Kumar, says that they need to figure out, early on, which hospitals the injured will be taken to, which roads the fire brigade or other agencies will take to reach the spot, and start clearing them immediately. “At the same time, we divert traffic to other routes, and deploy our personnel accordingly.”
Not just fires
The fire brigade’s role begins with rescue and ends with salvage. It has the experience and equipment, such as ladders to reach high spots, diving equipment and cameras, including thermal ones, to find survivors in a building collapse. The leadership must think on its feet, reacting to the nature of the disaster and what is available, including reinforcements and additional supplies and how quickly they can be brought in.
Chief Fire Officer P.S. Rahangdale says, “We operate with a time-life graph in mind, and both variables are inversely proportional to each other: the longer an operation takes, the less the chances of lives being saved. That is why we need to act as fast as we can so that the maximum number of people can be saved.”
They may need to bring in heavy machinery like excavators and earth-movers to clear rubble or move precarious debris that could endanger trapped survivors. Aside from electronic devices that help them find trapped people, they also use old-fashioned methods like yelling out and listening for responses.
The super-specialists
The NDRF has been stationed in Mumbai since 2012. Their base is at Andheri Sports Complex, where they carry out regular training exercises and mock drills.
The Fire Brigade’s SOP states that NDRF should at least be on stand-by, if not involved, for Level 3 disasters and physically present at the site for Level 4 and 5 disasters.
“The Disaster Management Act, 2005 clearly states that once the NDRF is called in, we assume charge of the operation,” says Commandant Anupam Srivastava of the Fifth Battalion of the NDRF. “We are empowered to act suo motu in case a disaster seems to be serious enough, and are usually on stand-by during such situations.”
What the NDRF brings in is expertise and equipment dedicated solely towards saving lives in major calamities. Its personnel are trained to international standards, and that includes the non-human members of their teams: for example, the dogs are trained to detect the slightest vibration under the debris, which can indicate a human presence. They have sophisticated equipment like sensors that can pick up a heartbeat under many metres of debris, small cameras that can slip into crevices and cracks a human or dog can’t. They usually scan every square inch of the site before the heavy machinery comes in to clear what’s left.
When the NDRF steps in, the other agencies do not step out. While it has the expertise to deal with a wide range of disasters — including biological or chemical emergencies, even nuclear incidents — local fire brigade, police and municipality staff know their city well, and their support is needed. Inter-agency coordination is critical, and the NDRF team calls the shots.
NDRF and the other agencies stay on the scene till the rescue and salvage operations are complete, after which the government takes over the rehabilitation.
The backroom
Aside from the on-site responders, one more agency plays a crucial, if quieter role: the BMC.
The civic body coordinates the operation from start to finish, including the clearing up of what remains after the responders have gone back to their bases. Over the years, it has developed SOPs for every imaginable scenario, so that when the unthinkable happens, they can react smoothly and efficiently. And instantly.
Mahesh Narvekar, head of the DMC, says, “We have dedicated hotlines connecting us with 51 agencies and SOPs for 103 types of situations, from a bird trapped in a tree to earthquakes and tsunamis. The relevant SOP is put into effect the moment we are informed about a disaster, and resources like ambulances, demolition vehicles and rescue workers are mobilised accordingly.” The agencies include the fire brigades of nearby cities, as well as refineries and factories in the city and the airport — all of which have trained personnel and equipment — in case additional resources are needed, and other agencies that may not strike the layperson as a necessity: for instance, the Indian Meteorological Department for weather updates that might affect operations.
The DMC is also in charge of ensuring medical aid. “We have an electronic map of all civic and private hospitals in the city,” Mr. Narvekar says. “The moment we get a call, we enter the location into the system and it shows us the closest hospitals. Our personnel contact all these hospitals, give them an idea of the number of victims and the nature of injuries to expect and instruct them to prepare accordingly. In case the civic-run hospitals run short of resources, we call the nearest private hospitals.”
The unforeseeable, and other challenges
No SOP can cover every variable. All that can be predicted is that the unpredictable will happen.
Curious bystanders, who Comdt. Srivastava calls ‘disaster tourists,’ are a definite impediment, and have to be moved. He says there have been times the NDRF’s sniffer dogs had difficulty finding victims because they were distracted by the noise made by onlookers. Police officers say some people are there solely to pursue agendas counter to what the rescuers must prioritise. For instance, in case of a building collapse, residents or neighbours, angry — sometimes justifiably — with a building owner, will try to work the crowd into a rage, leading to a law and order situation to deal with in addition to the disaster.
Some of the interference may come from the best possible motives, like citizens genuinely wanting to help other human beings in distress. Their lack of professional expertise, though, can be a liability, and they must be dealt with firmly but as tactfully as the circumstances permit. “The presence of onlookers also puts them at risk,” a police officer says. “If there has been a bomb blast or building collapse, there is always the chance of a second bomb being planted solely to target the crowds that gather, or a secondary collapse in the vicinity.”
The other challenge is politicians who visit the scene of a disaster while the operation is underway. While some have sound motives, responders say that most just want to score political points and media visibility. Their visits mean the police must execute VIP protocols — to ensures leaders and retinues arrive and depart smoothly and safely — which is a needless diversion. Senior police officers say they have often made discreet requests to political leaders to delay their visits so as not to disrupt rescue work.
With so many agencies involved, there must be times when wires cross, when conflicts occur? Off the record, officials across agencies confess that this does happen, and sometimes acrimonious exchanges result. None, though, would comment publicly.
The official line is simple: the sole objective of any disaster response operation is to save lives. As Mr. Rahangdale says, “All the coordination between the agencies and every decision taken is always for this purpose.” Comdt. Srivastava sums it up: “None of us feels good about pulling out a dead body.”
