A two-day preparatory meeting for the second BIMSTEC Disaster Management Exercise for the year 2020 began on Thursday in Puri involving the delegates from all the seven member nations of Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).

While the meeting was chaired by NDMA member Lt General NC Marwah, Principal Secretary (DM) and Managing Director, OSDMA, Pradeep Jena graced the event as guest along with Director General, NDRF Satya Narayan Pradhan.

The OSDMA co-hosted the event which will culminate in organizing BIMSTEC DMEx-2020 and BIMSTEC Expert Group meeting in February 2020.

The main objective of the preparatory meeting is to work out the modalities required for BIMSTEC-DMEx in advance, so that maximum benefits can be derived from the exercise. The objective of the proposed BIMSTEC event is to test the existing emergency procedures for notification, preparedness and emergency response in a coordinated manner during a major earthquake scenario at cultural heritage site. This will test multi-stakeholder coordination and disaster scenario involving international, national, State, district and local agencies.

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs chose the historic city of Puri for the preparatory meeting and for main exercise to get the exact scenarios as it houses a number of cultural heritage sites of India that are highly vulnerable to natural disasters.

During this preparatory meeting Conduct of Table Top Exercise (TTx), Field Training Exercise (FTx) and After Action Review (AAR) were discussed. Besides, logistic plan for final BIMSTEC DMEx-20 was also discussed amongst the member nations.