City to get disaster response force

Acknowledging the rise in disasters in Mumbai city, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has come up with a novel way for quick disaster response. The city will now have its very own exclusive disaster response force, under the tag of City Disaster Response Force (CDRF).

Citing that such a cohesive force is the need of the hour, the BMC declared its intentions to train around 500 men in disaster response, when Lieutenant General N.C. Marwah, who is also member of the National Disaster Management Agency, visited the civic disaster management room at the BMC headquarters on Wednesday last week.

While the BMC intends to create this group on the lines of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), following this, Mumbai will be the first city in India to have an exclusive, dedicated force for disaster management.

The BMC will rope in around 500 men to form the initial CDRF team. These men will be handpicked from the security staff presently already employed with the civic body, said additional municipal commissioner I.A. Kundan. The BMC has not planned to hire new staff for this purpose. The CDRF officials will be given rigorous training in management of several types of disasters, like building collapses, response in case of an earthquake, flood management and response, fire fighting, and threat to national security.

Mr Kundan said, “The idea behind this decision is self-reliance and self-sufficiency. Mumbai is constantly prone to disasters, and we have to rely on the NDRF and the State Reserve Police Force for help. We are not creating an alternative force to the NDRF. But the CDRF will be the first response.”

The CDRF will function exclusively within Mumbai, and is not meant even for the neighbouring corporations like the Thane Municipal Corporation or the Kalyan Dombivili Municipal Corporation. The officials will be trained in Mumbai by the existing disaster management team of the BMC. The civic body plans to start training the 500 officials right away, and will focus on their physical training in the first phase. Since no new men will be hired, no time will be wasted in recruitment.