THANE: The Thane municipal corporation is training the staff from its nine administrative wards to respond and attend to all types of disaster calls being reported daily in the city.
These teams will work as standby and pressed into service in tandem when the fire brigade or RDMC workforce is attending major rescue calls, especially during the monsoon, officials informed.
Avinash Sawant, chief of the regional disaster management cell at the Thane corporation said the idea is to ensure quick attendance to disasters and also to ease the burden on the fire brigade and other rescue teams. These trained staff will be helpful to attend minor calls during emergencies, especially during the rains, within their jurisdictions when the fire brigade or the RDMC are deployed elsewhere attending to major calls, said officials.
“The officials said staff from each department including the tree authority, water supply, drainage, public works among others working at the ward levels will be trained on how to attend and respond to emergencies from their respective area of operations like electrical fires, road cave-in, structure collapse, rescuing stranded people from water logged areas, tree and branch fall complaints among others. We have scheduled a series of training sessions with experts from national and state disaster response forces,” informed Sawant.
It may be recalled that the RDMC and fire brigade receives an average of 100 various disaster and rescue-related requests daily and the departments with limited staff at its disposal is often overworked attending to many calls, most of which are minor. Officials said there are time when the fire brigade or RDMC staff is deployed elsewhere or is stuck in traffic and this is when staff from these ward offices could come in handy.
It may be noted the corporation had earlier started an initiative to train local residents to how to attend to emergencies in their respective areas but the same was discontinued after tepid response from citizens.
