GHMC scales up efforts to tackle monsoon

Steps being taken such as display of ward-wise radar images on the IMD website

Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has scaled up monsoon measures this year with precautionary steps such as the display of ward-wise radar images on the India Meteorological Department (IMD) website.

Recently, the GHMC also adopted a common alert protocol to send messages on weather alerts based on the information available on IMD and websites.

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“On the instructions of MA&UD Minister KT Rama Rao, we have coordinated with IMD, Hyderabad, and their website is now showing GHMC ward-wise radar images,” said EV&DM Director N Prakash Reddy.

Earlier, only GHMC zone-wise radar image was available on the IMD website. EV&DM officials also said that the ward-wise radar images would help in better planning while executing monsoon measures and the local rainfall prediction would help in evacuations during emergencies.

The other measures taken up this year includes, procurement of equipment used by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) during rescue operations, training Disaster Response Force (DRF) personnel on rescue operations during floods, and training members of NGOs and voluntary organisations.

The training programmes were held under the supervision of NDRF teams with a focus to save lives and property during disasters including floods, said an official. The EV&DM was also regularly issuing rainfall alerts and asking citizens to stay indoors during heavy rains. Presently the alerts were being issued on Twitter along with DRF contact numbers.