HYDERABAD: Director General of Indian Meteorological Department, KJ Ramesh, during his visit to city on Thursday, reiterated that Telangana government can take lessons from Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Center’s (KSNDMC) initiative of setting up urban flood warning system in Bengaluru.His suggestion came against the backdrop of a report in these columns published on Thursday where it was advised that the team could visit Bengaluru to learn lessons from KSNDMC.
Addressing media, he said that IMD Hyderabad has formed a joint coordination team with Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation for fighting urban flooding in Hyderabad. Ramesh advised the team to visit Karnataka to study telemetry rain gauge network in the state which apart from giving real time rain data every 15 minutes also gives out flood warning and replicate the system in Hyderabad.
Ramesh said, “Karnataka has an idealistic telemetry rain gauge network. There are thousands of rain gauges in Karnataka which update data on rain every 15-minutes and SMS alert is sent to district collectors and other concerned officials in case of emergency.’
He further said that in future there will be decline in number of rainy days but frequency of high intensity rainfall will increase and it is a phenomenon that will be experienced across the world due to global warming. Ramesh said that by 2018 Indian Air Force in Dundigal will come up with a new Doppler Weather Radar, which will be a stand by for Hyderabad IMD, which also has one.
Inform before floods, not after : Ex NDMA vice-chairman
Former National Disaster Management Authority, Vice Chairman, Marri Shashidhar Reddy, who was also present for the meeting said, “There is a need for issuing alerts on flooding in advance to people rather than telling them not to leave their houses after the floods have already wrecked havoc and people are stuck in traffic jams, like it happened recently in Hyderabad. Rainfall warnings should also be more city specific rather than just issuing warning for the entire IMD sub-division of Telangana.