Odisha, in collaboration with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), organized a state-level Mock Exercise on Chemical and Industrial Disaster Management today in 24 Industrial Locations of 16 districts, viz. Angul, Dhenkanal, Balasore, Bhadrak, Cuttack, Ganjam, Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur, Kurdha, Koraput, Rayagada, Bolangir, Sambalpur, Jharsuguda, Sundergarh and Mayurbhanj of Odisha.
The basic objective of this Mock Exercise was to streamline emergency response and identify gap areas in detection, early warning, alert, evacuation, emergency response & containment at the industry and local government level.
The Mock Exercise was organized at industry locations based on scenarios related to the chemicals and hazardous materials being dealt by the factories. During the exercise, the industries responded to the situation as per their response mechanism, available equipment, and standard operating procedures. Additional resources like fire brigade, medical teams, etc. were also mobilized by the respective District Administration.
Based on the threat situation, nearby villagers were also evacuated to the nearby identified safe shelters. In addition to the top management and incident response teams of the industries, officials of district and block administration, district level line departments, local police, fire & emergency service, medical teams, PRI members and community volunteers were also involved in the exercise.
Six (06) specialized teams of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), 3rd Bn, Mundli and 12 ODRAF teams were deployed to various industries for the mock exercise. Senior officers of District Administration were deployed to each industry site as Incident Commanders to coordinate the response activities and mobilization of resources required.
The state-level technical observers were deployed from organizations like the Directorate of Factories and Boilers, State Pollution Control Board, the Indian Army, the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, CRPF & CISF. During the mock exercise, Aditya Kumar, Commandant (Retd.), NDMA, supervised the operations at the State Emergency Operation Centre (SEOC) along with Officials of OSDMA and the office of SRC.
After completion of the exercise, a debriefing session was also organized through virtual mode at the State Emergency Operation Centre (SEOC), Bhubaneswar, with the participation of the Administration of 16 districts, representatives of identified industries, and nominated Incident Commanders and Technical Observers to discuss various observations and feedback.
The debriefing session was chaired by Padmanav Behera, Additional Special Relief Commissioner.
