WAYANAD LANDSLIDES

Address anomalies in hazard mapping & local level disaster management plans, say experts

Kalpetta: Experts have called for better execution of disaster management plans at the local level and for the need to address anomalies in hazard mapping. In a recently held seminar, “Wayanad After Mundakkai: Lessons and Approaches”, organised under the joint auspices of the Wayanad Prakrithi Samrakshana Samithi and Hume Centre for Ecology and Wildlife Biology in association with the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, disaster management specialists and scientists stressed the need for flawless implementation of disaster management plans in panchayats which are susceptible to natural disasters.

The handicaps of the DM plans at the local level also affect the planning of local-level operations during calamities. “Though we have susceptibility mapping and watershed management plans for each panchayat, neither the officials nor the people’s representatives even look into them," said noted environmental scientist Dr V Subash Chandra Bose. “Being ignorant of the nature of landmass, such officials green signal projects without serious environmental impact assessment," he added.

Disaster management expert K G Thara pointed out that hazard mapping, which is the base on which DM plans are prepared, is unscientific. The existing scale of the hazard map is 1: 50000 scale, which means one centimetre in the map represents 50000 centimetres on the ground, which is inadequate to make any real-time decisions at the local level. “Local-level action plans are very difficult if the scale is 1:50000. The hazard maps also indicate that they are not geo-referenced, which means that the boundaries are not mapped to scale," she said.

“They are experts, but the scale doesn’t suit the DM requirements for taking a plan of action at the local level. We should demand a site-specific mapping on the Western Ghats region," Thara added. It is high time that the union government brought all the agencies under one umbrella with GSI as the nodal agency and decide on what parameters have to be taken into consideration for hazard mapping and on what scale the mapping should be done.

The seminar also called for the need to decentralize weather monitoring systems. “For micro-level monitoring of rain and for early landslide predictions, decentralized weather monitoring systems are essential in the Western Ghats," said Dr S Abhilash, Director, Advanced Centre for Atmospheric Radar Research, CUSAT. “Hume Centre for Ecology and Wildlife Biology in Wayanad and Chalakkudi Puzha Samrakshana Samithi at Thrissur are models for such systems," he said.