A four-day Bangladesh-US joint exercise on disaster preparedness began on Sunday focusing on earthquake preparedness in the capital city of Dhaka.
Bangladesh Armed Forces Division (AFD) and United States Army Pacific are jointly organising the exercise styled ‘Bangladesh Pacific Resilience Disaster Response Exercise & Exchange (DREE)’, an annual civil-military disaster preparedness and response initiative. AFD Principal Staff Officer Lt Gen Abu Belal Muhammad Shafiul Huq inaugurated the fourth edition of DREE at the Lake Shore Hotel in Gulshan while US Ambassador to Dhaka Dan W Mozena was present as special guest. Lt Col Emdadul Islam delivered the welcome address.
The objectives of the exercise are to operationalise joint task force and multi-national coordination centre themes, evaluate engineering, medical, urban search & rescue, logistical and communication procedures post-earthquake in the Mirpur sector of Dhaka City, incorporate debris management requirements into disaster response and test operational and tactical level field equipment.
Some 145 participants from 94 stakeholders are taking part at the ‘Table Top Exercise’ and about 450 personnel from different stakeholders will participate in the ‘Field Training Exercise’ to be held at Mirpur-10 area on the premises of the Fire Service and Civil Defence Training Centre. Speaking on the occasion, Gen Huq said, “It is difficult to forecast an earthquake but if we take historical and geographical data we can always predict the possibility of one.”
“And, by all indications we live in an earthquake-prone area. Dhaka is now one of the most vulnerable cities in the world for earthquake and to some extent the same applies for Chittagong and Sylhet,” he said, adding, “We cannot stop it from happening but we can always prepare ourselves to minimise its impact. This is why the focus of DREE 2013 is earthquake preparedness for Dhaka City.”
The General said that in order to prepare, protect and respond in case of disasters, issues relating to awareness and preparedness and capacity building of the professionals would have to be addressed.
Ambassador Mozena said it was not a question of ‘whether or if’ rather a question of ‘when’ Dhaka would be hit by an earthquake.
“We do not know when an earthquake will hit Dhaka, but we do know that Bangladesh is crisscrossed by three major fault lines, that one of them passes relatively close to Dhaka, that given the historical pattern of earthquakes in this region, Dhaka may be about three decades overdue for a major quake,” he said.
The envoy said, “We know, too, that if Dhaka were hit by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, 20 per cent or more of the 3,50,000 buildings of this great megacity would collapse, according to a Government of Bangladesh estimate. Of course, the destruction from a bigger earthquake would increase exponentially.
Some predict that a 7.5 magnitude quake could bring down up to 80 per cent of the buildings.”
“In a sense, precision in the estimate of destruction does not really matter, since any of these scenarios would be catastrophic beyond comprehension,” he said.
Mozena laid emphasis on earthquake preparedness and training for volunteers taking part in rescue efforts in disasters like Rana Plaza tragedy.
-With The Independent input
