Washington:”Successfully evacuating a million people is not a small task. This cannot be merely achieved by kicking the entire state machinery into top gear for three-four days following a cyclone warning,” the World Bank said, days after the cyclone Phailin hit the eastern Indian shore.
The World Bank has praised Indias evacuation of nearly 10 lakh people in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, which ensured minimal loss of human lives, before the cyclone Phailin made landfall.
This has taken years of planning, construction of disaster risk mitigation infrastructure, setting up of evacuation protocols, identification of potential safe buildings and most importantly, working with communities and local organisations in setting up volunteer teams who all knew exactly what needed to be done,” it said.
“The Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) and the Government of Odisha need to be given full credit for their unwavering commitment to disaster preparedness and risk mitigation,” the Bank said.
Following the disaster in 1999, Odisha set up the OSDMA, the first state agency focused exclusively on disaster management in India.
