[7/11] Managing Disasters (Information)…

Just because I worked as a volunteer managing relief/rehab after natural disasters and then as a UN officer using ICT for governance, doesn’t give me much of an authority to talk about managing manmade disasters and using ICT for it. But then here are my thoughts-

Much is being talked about ‘Preparedness’ in terms of Government intelligence agencies. All of that is a ‘must do’ to avoid next disaster but then lets spend sometime on this one that has just happened and we have yet to recover out of.
Whats happening here?

Blasts at more than half a dozen stations and hence those hundreds of patients are hospitalised in more than a dozen hospitals. In first 12 hours, you try find out about your dear ones and you need to travel all over mumbai (i dont know ‘how’ though, when the train system isnt working, buses are jam packed and there is mayham on the roads). One or two of these hospitals have one information officer each, the rest dont even have that. There are more than 20/30 people waiting for every information officer. One wonders, what stops you from taking 10 photocopies of the same damn thing and setting up 10 info desks per hospital.

after a few hours, you have telephone nos provided per hospital. But then there is only one (or two at most) number per hospital. when thousands are calling ospital to check the whereabouts and wellbeing of their loved ones, can we not have 10 lines/seats per number?

There is something to learn here from what happened at London, post 7/7. A call center was set up that handled all queries related to the disaster and provided the best info they could to all the stakeholders. These lines also were used to gather intelligence from anyone of the 60 million UK residents.

Can India, whose IT/ITES prowess is talked about all over the world not set up an ICT-Call Center hub that manages such dissasters?

Can there not be an Emergency Information Management team flying to the site and ‘stand by call center’ activated within minutes of the disaster?

What a shame! a country that has 1.4 million IT/ITES employees, that does 65 % of outsourced ITServices work worldwide doesnt have systems ready to manage (information on) these disasters.