Disaster prone villages learn to help themselves

By Syed Zarir Hussain Mar 4, 2007, 15:43 GMT

Murakata (Assam), March 4 (IANS) It was a gloomy morning. The sky was overcast with ominous clouds hovering over the village in Morigaon district, about 70 km east of Guwahati. A drizzle was sweeping the area, with the potholed road cutting through the village getting slushier by the minute.

Suddenly the shrill cries of men, women and children rent the air - a crowded passenger bus had plunged into the big pond located next to the main road.

In a matter of minutes, three villagers reached the scene and swung into action. They dived into the pond and began a brave rescue mission. All the three were trained search and rescue volunteers of the Murkata village under the Disaster Risk Management Programme (DRMP) of the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

Soon, scores of other trained volunteers descended on the spot to join the trio in a daring attempt to save the trapped passengers -- the bus, with 41 passengers, by then was sinking into the 25-foot-deep pond.

Some 30 people were rescued, most of them with injuries.

'I think all credit goes to the village disaster management volunteers who saved many lives on that day,' says D. Nath, a retired schoolteacher, recalling that day on Oct 18, 2005.

In Morigaon district, the DRMP came into being in early 2004.

Apart the successful rescue mission under the DRMP, a Walking Blood Bank Programme has also been initiated by mobilising people, especially the youth, for voluntary blood donation and maintaining a database of volunteers in every village of the district along with their blood reports.

'This idea came to me when I saw scores of people injured in a bomb blast in Morigaon crying for help in hospitals. Since the preparedness was not there, the hospital staff was unable to cope,' F.B. Manik Shah Mazumder, a DRMP district project officer.

Today, the flood-prone district has a Hospital Contingency Plan ready to manage mass casualties -- to be precise, 18 teams ranging from surgical units to paramedics and even sanitary workers all geared up to meet any eventuality.

More than 550 villages in the remote and inaccessible parts of the district, which has a population of 775,874 people, are covered under DRMP activities.

'We have about 50 trained volunteers in each village,' Mazumder said.

'Major accidents apart, we in Morigaon district are prone to heavy flooding and erosion. Our volunteers are highly motivated and committed and we hope we would be able to do justice to the task assigned to us during any disaster,' Mazumder added.

That fateful day in October 2005, they certainly did. Eleven people died in the accident. But till date, people here acknowledge that the toll would have been much higher but for the search and rescue volunteers.

'We must admit that the training imparted to us while we got enrolled as volunteers did help us to effectively carry out the rescue mission,' said Lokendra, a volunteer who was part of the rescue team.

Once the passengers were rescued and brought to safety, the Health and First Aid Team of the village under DRMP started providing basic minimum first aid to the injured.

'The search and rescue volunteers played a commendable role during the accident although we must also appreciate the local villagers for their support and heroics,' said Morigaon district magistrate Sabir Hussain.

The volunteers then followed the village disaster management plan and began mobilising conveyance -- from cars to motorcycles and even bicycles -- to carry the injured to the nearest hospital at Mayong, about four kilometres away.

This timely action by the volunteers came as an eye-opener for others in Morigaon and today, the response from locals to enrol as members of the village disaster management committees and teams has increased manifold.

'The response has been overwhelming, with people in large numbers willing to become volunteers,' Hussain said.

'No doubt about it. I would like to become a volunteer myself now,' said A. Das, a passenger who was on the bus.

© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service