The checklist of flood preparedness

The arrival of pre-monsoon rains sounds the alarm bell in Assam for forenhancing disaster preparedness preparednessfor multiple waves of annual floods. Apart from rescue and relief operations, disaster preparedness also includes making makeshift shelters safe and secure and ensuring availability of safe and clean drinking water in flood-hit areas. When villages get submerged under floodwaters, availability of safe drinking water is a big challenge. A standard advisory issued as part of flood preparedness is the raising of hand pumps in flood-prone areas so that flood waters cannot contaminate safe drinking water. With the majority of rural households being dependent on piped water supply under Jal Jeevan Mission, the availability of safe drinking water in flood-hit areas will be a serious problem if floodwater levels rise above the height of household tapes and piped water supply schemes are damaged. As many as 526 piped water supply schemes were damaged during three waves of flood that hit the state last year. Raised handpumps near relief camps and individual households or at identified central locations can ensure availability of safe drinking water during high flood situations and make flood-prone villages more resilient. Assessing the potential threat to piped water supply schemes and networks over the next month prior to the arrival of monsoon rain will be crucial for improving preparedness. Such a task should not be left alone for government staff, and village communities taking a proactive role will help district disaster management authorities to take mitigation measures. The notified flood season in the state is from May 1 till October 31, but generally the second wave of floods triggered by heavy monsoon rain leaves a more devastating trail of destruction than the first or the third wave. The first wave of floods, which generally occurs between late May and mid-June, provides enough room for local disaster management authorities to scrutinise the checklist of flood management and make necessary modifications and improvements for better preparedness for the second wave. More than 4000 relief camps and shelters were identified during the pre-monsoon period in the state last year, while during the three waves altogether, 866 relief camps and shelters were opened, which indicated that the state was well prepared in the event the number of inmates increased compared to the final figure of affected population, which was nearly 43 lakhs. There is no room for complacency, as the extent of damage and impact this year will depend on the amount of rainfall in the state and neighbouring states of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, and Manipur, as well as in Bhutan, and the status of flood embankments, most of which have already outlived their span. The final flood memorandum submitted by the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) to the Ministry of Home Affairs on last year’s flood highlighted that due to high rainfall in the state and upper catchment in the neighbouring states and in Bhutan, a huge volume of water rushes through the “narrow bowl-shaped valley of Assam to the Bay of Bengal, ravaging the area through which it flows with floods and erosion.” Evidently, there is no escape from the annual ravaging flood, and the preparedness cannot be lowered. Rather, the scale of preparedness must be optimal in anticipation of worse floods than the worst floods in the past. When a major breach occurs in an embankment, the damage is severe, and often affected people are required to stay in relief camps for a longer duration even after the receding of floodwaters when their houses get damaged. The relief camp for such flood-hit people being a safe and secure place with minimum basic amenities of safe drinking water, toilets, food, clothes and utensils is essential to help them cope with the situation till they are properly rehabilitated. Initiatives by ASDMA to create child-friendly spaces in relief camps are laudable. Ensuring that this space is available to all the children of affected areas taking shelter in relief camps with their parents requires adequate planning in advance. Such a child-friendly space helps the education department to continue educational activities for children while keeping them safe from drowning in flooded areas by engaging them in activities within the relief camp premises, according to ASDMA’s concept of child-friendly space in relief camps. Developing innovative educational learning material and activities which can help build awareness of flood safety and basic understanding of why floods occur and how to cope so that they can relate education received during their temporary stay in the relief camps to the disaster situation around. Helping children and students in flood-hit areas understand the natural disaster can go a long way in triggering imagination in them about their ideas of coping mechanisms so that when they grow up, the childhood trauma of displacement due to floods is erased with their own organic ideas of flood management, prevention and the management of natural disasters.