Bhubaneswar, September 5, 2018: In order to improve the preparedness against Tsunami, a tsunami mock exercise was conducted in Odisha on Wednesday.
The exercise was conducted in 328 tsunami prone villages/ULBs in six costal districts Odisha as part of the Indian ocean-wide tsunami mock exercise. At the state level, Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) was coordinating the entire exercise.
The Indian ocean-wide tsunami mock exercise (drill) was conducted for two days on Tuesday and Wednesday in 23 Indian Ocean rim countries including India.
The Exercise is an international event, named as IOWave18, coordinated by Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC)/UNESCO. In India the exercise was coordinated by Indian Tsunami Early Warning Centre (ITEWC) housed at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad with support from National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
Two scenarios were decided for the exercise. The first scenario simulated an earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 in the Makran Trench, south of Iran on Tuesday at 1130 IST and the second on Wednesday at 0830 IST with magnitude of 9.3 at Northern Sumatra, Indonesia.
Both the exercises were conducted in real-time lasting for about 12 hours and ITEWC issued 15 tsunami bulletins to both national and regional stakeholders through GTS, email, fax, SMS as well as on website. The first scenario was suitable for West Coast and the second scenario on was suitable for East Coast of India.
The purpose of exercise wad to increase tsunami preparedness, evaluate response capabilities and improve coordination mechanism at different level.
During the mock exercise, INCOIS generated and issued series of dummy tsunami bulletins to the State Emergency Operation Center (SEOC) at SRC office, Bhubaneswar through email, Fax and SMS.
The SEOC immediately passed the bulletins to the District Emergency Operation Centre (DEOC) by Fax, email, SMS and social media. DEOC in return passed the bulletins to the local BDOs, Tahasildars and Police stations for final dissemination to the village community.
The local Sarpanch, Community Mobilisers and Community Volunteers alerted the villagers by any means of communication available and take initiative for evacuation to shelters or safer places through the identified safe routes in shortest time period.
Alert siren systems installed in the tsunami prone villages were activated and controlled from SEOC to alert the people through siren and disseminate voice messages.
This IOWave 18 was a mock exercise to improve the preparedness against tsunami disaster.
