Four big steps in India's Nepal earthquake rescue effort

NEW DELHI: In one of its quickest and most extensive responses to an international emergency, India flew in rescue teams, medical supplies and relief material to Nepal where the death toll in the weekend's earthquake has already crossed 3,000.

India was the first to send in aid, with supplies starting within hours of Saturday's killer quake. Operating at the very epicentre of the earthquake, Indian Air Force choppers have rescued many hundreds in sorties from the worst-affected districts. India has also set up a field hospital in Kathmandu and sent in its engineers to work on restoring road connectivity.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been monitoring the relief efforts personally and told the defence ministry , which is carrying out a bulk of the relief work, to spare no expense in the relief efforts, reports said.

We take a look at four ways in which India's response to Nepal's plight is quick and special:

IAF & NDRF put into action: India has mounted a mammoth relief effort and has so far deployed 13 military aircraft, three civilian aircraft of Air India and Jet Airways, six Mi-17 helicopters, two Advanced Light Helicopters while two more Mi-17 choppers are kept in standby.

Mobile hospitals have been transported to Nepal, and NDRF teams are at work. IAF aircraft also carried blankets, tents, tonnes of food, paramedics, stretches, and medicines.

Braving rains, on third day, since the disaster struck, rescue teams are continuing to sift through mountains of rubble, looking for survivors.

Inter-ministerial team sent: An inter-ministerial team comprising senior officials from ministries of Home, Defence, External Affairs and NDMA have gone to Nepal to coordinate rescue and relief operations.

Headed by Additional Secretary in the Home Ministry B K Prasad, the team will also monitor the evacuation of stranded Indians in Nepal. Sources said the team will coordinate with the Nepalese government in the salvage operation and assess the damage.

It will send a report to New Delhi so that all help could be provided to the Himalayan nation on priority. The decision to send the high-level team was taken at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday.

Sending UAVs to map destruction: India is sending Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to Kathmandu to map the destruction in the neighbouring country and help rescue efforts.


"The scale of disaster is so huge that Nepalese authorities, despite their best efforts, are overwhelmed and their infrastructure is under severe stress. We don't even know exactly where and what building has collapsed. Since communication lines are down, there is little information coming from the public either. UAVs will help us map the destruction in the city and channelize resources accordingly ," said an NDRF officer.

NDRF sources said the UAVs will also help in locating survivors in half-collapsed buildings and can be used to look through balconies or windows for any trapped victims.

Ensuring power & fuel supply: The government is sending teams of senior executives and engineers from state-run energy companies to Nepal with a view to ensure uninterrupted fuel supply and restore power lines.

In the first phase, a team of four-five senior executives from flagship refiner-marketer Indian Oil Corporation and more than a dozen engineers from transmission utility PowerGrid Corporation have gone to Nepal.

"We have established contact with Nepal Oil Corporation and assured them of our full cooperation in maintaining fuel supplies. We are constantly monitoring the stock position of all products at our main dispatch centre in Raxaul and their depots in Amalekhganj.Both have comfortable stock positions," IndianOil chairman B Ashok told TOI.

Nepal gets all its petro products from India under a government-to-government dispensation. IndianOil supplies more than a million tonne of various fuels in a month. This consists of 26,000-27,000 tonnes of cooking gas and 0.8 million tonne of petrol, diesel and kerosene.

Disaster monitoring system for SAARC soon: India is playing a leading role in implementing an agreement signed by all South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) states on rapid response to natural disasters - visible in the humanitarian and technical assistance India extended to Nepal.

India is helping set up a Saarc monitoring system that involves developing tools for early warning system and risk mitigation in member states. An agreement has been signed by all Saarc states - Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and India.

The early warning system will include information sharing on cyclones, floods, tsunami etc. India is committed to provide technical assistance to all member states, besides manpower and financial support. New Delhi had also ratified a United Nations protocol in Sendai, Japan, recently which commits the Asian giant towards extending financial and technical assistance to smaller countries in the region.

The initiative will include setting up a regional monitoring system, assessment and early warning systems and standby arrangements for disaster relief, the kind India has deployed in Nepal.