ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Droughts, Floods Test Disaster Warning System

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Aug 30 2000 (IPS) - Devastating droughts and floods in succession in the country, have brought into question the efficacy of India’s sophisticated disaster warning system, say independent experts.

It is one of the few countries in the world to get fast and accurate information of atmospheric conditions linked to droughts and rainfall.

But the knowledge has failed to reduce the damage from these natural calamities, they say.

Four months ago, millions of people in western Rajasthan and Gujarat states and in southern Andhra Pradesh were praying for deliverance from one of the worst droughts in living memory.

Now, army boats and air force helicopters are helping rescue hundreds of villagers marooned on house and tree tops by the swirling waters of the river Godavari in Andhra Pradesh.

According to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, the floods have damaged property worth more than 400 million U.S. dollars, with crops, roads and electrical installations washed away.

The United News of India (UNI) news agency reported Wednesday the flood situation was expected to worsen with the rains continuing unabated.

Helicopters continued to drop food and essential daily use items in the state’s worst-hit Khammam and East Godavari districts. Telephone links to many areas were snapped with authorities relying on ham radio operators. There was serious danger of water-borne diseases breaking out.

The chief minister blamed the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) for wrongly predicting scanty rainfall in the state this year. The IMD had forecast between five and six centimetres of average rainfall. But there was a single downpour of over 54 cms last week.

“The depression formed suddenly and we were not given adequate warning,” Naidu said.

But he admitted that even with timely warning, little could have been done in a situation, which developed in the space of hours, leaving at least 160 people dead.

Disaster management experts are pointing to flaws in India’s disaster management warning and planning systems.

Amir Ali Khan of the National Center for Disaster Management, said while the IMD could not be directly blamed for what happened in Andhra Pradesh, there were shortcomings in long-term planning.

The IMD’s satellite-based disaster warning system in Andhra Pradesh is linked to police stations and local administration offices in remote ares. It is regarded as the finest in the country.

The state is also implementing the World Bank-aided Andhra Pradesh Hazard Mitigation and Emergency Cyclone Project, which aims to enhance the IMD’s early warning capabilities.

However, the information did not reach the people concerned in time.

The system also failed to warn millions of people when a cyclonic storm in October last year devastated eastern coastal Orissa state, which adjoins Andhra Pradesh, killing at least 10,000 people.

India is one of the few countries in the world which, for some years, is using space technology for near-real time monitoring of droughts, floods and cyclones.

However, this is yet to translate into benefits for ordinary people because of poor information management, say disaster management experts.

Large volumes of atmospheric data are collected daily over the sub-continent by a constellation of Indian made and foreign satellites, like LANDSAT, SPOT, ERS and RADARSAT.

The information is relayed to a receiving station in Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh.

However, officials admit that the system has shortcomings. At least three days elapse between the collection of the information and its transmission to concerned agencies.

“Disaster management needs to integrate satellite-based communications with satellite-based remote sensing for effectiveness,” said a spokesman of the Indian Space Research organisation (ISRO).

The annual four-month monsoon rain, which begins in June, also caused flooding in western coastal Gujarat state. Ironically, Gujarat had just put behind a crippling drought, when the rains struck.

Before the rains came, the Gujarat government was criticised for not issuing a timely drought warning to the nearly 300,000 affected people in 25,000 villages.

The state government was accused of concealing meteorological data, which indicated deficient rainfall over two years.