Uttarakhand Students to Now Get Disaster Management Lessons at Schools

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and approaching monsoons which lead to many disasters in the state, the Uttarakhand government has now decided that students will be taught disaster management in schools once a week.

While taking a review meeting of the disaster management department, the chief minister instructed the officers to provide training to the youth members of Gram Sabha so as to prepare themselves and learn how to handle such situations.

“It is necessary to make people aware of disaster management given the geographical conditions of Uttarakhand. It is important to train people for incidents of fire and how to tackle emergency situations during the rainy season. For this, mock drills should also be conducted from time to time to meet the challenges of disaster,” said Rawat.

He further said that to make the training that is being given for disaster management more effective, experts in the field should be consulted.

“People who are authorized by the experts to train teachers across schools should start the training work for disaster management,” said Rawat. 

Furthermore, the chief minister mentioned that sensitive places should be identified from the point of view of disaster before monsoon sets in and efforts should be made to reduce disaster response time.

In the meeting, officials from the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority informed that work was underway for installing Doppler radar in Mukteshwar and Surkanda which will give accurate information related to the weather. 

To strengthen the communication system, 184 satellite phones have been provided at the tehsil level across the state.