BENGALURU: The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown a huge challenge to rescue and relief operations across the globe. In India, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has developed new Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for its personnel and victims during floods keeping in mind the pandemic guidelines,” S N Pradhan, Director General, NDRF, told TNIE.
“We had developed these new SOPs in January itself more for the floods than cyclones because the former are common during Indian monsoons. We have vetted new relief and rescue protocols and have fine tuned them in the two cyclones – ‘Amphan’ in West Bengal and Odisha and ‘Nisarga’ in Maharashtra and Gujarat,” he said. “Odisha government provided free Covid-19 test for the NDRF personnel deployed there for Amphan.
I will request other states and Union Territories to offer free testing to our men deployed for ground operations,” he added. “One of our men, who was deployed in West Bengal has tested positive and as a matter of our new SOPs the teams that had gone for Amphan and Nisarga operations have been put under quarantine. We have dedicated quarantine centres at all the 50 NDRF bases in the country. Teams that return from operations will be tested and quarantined at the base,” he said.
Explaining the new SOPs, Pradhan said, “For floods, one has to wade through water or use boats to reach the marooned people. Flood water is contaminated and my men need to wear protective gear, which while protecting them, should also allow them free movement. Recently the personal protective equipment (PPE) that NDRF men wore for Goalpara floods in Assam got wet and we had to change the material to rain-proof. We have made some vents in the new sets to allow breathing and prevent perspiration, which is again to help prevent Covid-19.
We have come up with two categories of PPE for the rescue teams. One is the normal PPE and the other has been customised for flood relief.” He added, “We are trying to augment authorisation of the equipment. The government has already supplied 60,000 normal PPE to the NDRF and two sets of customised PPE per person are being readied. Our calculation is that every personnel should have at least four sets of the PPE.”