Delhi Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena on Wednesday stressed for the setting up an Unified Command and Control Centre and Disaster Response Force for the capital. This comes at a meeting of Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) chaired by the Lieutenant Governor. The meeting was convened to assess the preparedness of the capital in the wake of earthquake floods, heat events. Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, Chief Secretary of Delhi, Dharmendra, and senior officials attended the meeting.

Notably, Delhi was one of the few states in the country to not have a State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) of its own. The city also lacked a Command and Control Centre (CCC), making a unified and integrated response at the time of disaster impossible.

To this end, the Lieutenant Governor has directed officials to make land/building available at the earliest and requested the CM to address the issues of logistics that had been hitherto neglected by the previous government. The authority was asked to provide all necessary technological support in renovation and restructuring of DDMA and setting up of the CCC.

The vulnerability of Delhi to earthquakes owing to its location in Seismic Zone-IV and the recent earthquake on February 18, made a comprehensive mitigation and prevention strategy imperative. Moreover, microzonation of areas in the city presented a picture, wherein most of the densely populated colonies along the Yamuna, North, North-West and South-West Delhi fell in highly quake probable areas. The fact that these areas housed most of the unauthorized colonies wherein structural safety of four-five-storeyed houses on extremely plot sizes was flagged as a matter of grave concern.

Apart from this, the issue of heat waves and resultant hardships faced by the people as also flooding during monsoons, being taken up at the level of the DDMA itself, underlined the importance attached to these core infrastructural issues by the new regime at the helm.

Held much in advance of the forthcoming Summer and subsequent Monsoon seasons, discussion took place upon preventive, curative and emergent measures concerning various aspects that included availability and distribution management of water, desilting of drains and sewer lines, drainage management, installation of requisite equipments, etc. as far as extreme heat and flooding were concerned.

With regards to earthquake preparedness, the meeting deliberated upon retro fitment of hospitals, identified school buildings for immediate relief, fire stations, gas, water, power supply lines and Metro.

Large scale retro fitment especially in unauthorized colonies, with active public participation to make buildings earthquake-resistant and deployment of civil defence, home guard and disaster relief volunteers in event of an earthquake were also deliberated upon. With regards to the issue of summer heat action plan 2025 and flood management, the Lieutenant Governor and the Chief Minister asked officers to present a comprehensive plan of action within a month and to have them ready for implementation well in advance.