BHUBANESWAR: With Odisha at the mercy of frequent natural disasters, especially cyclones, the 15th Finance Commission has sanctioned a grant of Rs 800 crore to further strengthen the early warning dissemination system (EWDS).
The state government, which has already commissioned EWDS in 22 blocks of six coastal districts since 2016 to provide disaster warning to communities, intends to expand and upgrade the system with advanced technology by utilizing the finance commission grant.
EWDS is a full-proof communication system to address the existing gap in disseminating disaster warning by strengthening the emergency operation centres in the state, district and block level. It aims to save lives and property residing near the coastal areas.
At present, as many as 1205 villages from 22 blocks in the coastal districts of Balasore, Bhadrak, Jagatsinghpur, Puri and Ganjam have been covered under EWDS. As part of the system, watch towers have been set up at 122 locations within 1.5 km from the coastline for dissemination of cyclone or tsunami warning through sirens and mass messaging.
“Establishment of EWDS is part of our robust disaster preparedness strategy aiming to save lives on priority basis. Since Odisha is hit by cyclones almost every alternate year, we had sought assistance from the finance commission to strengthen our disaster management strategy,” said an official at the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority.
The official said the finance commission grant will be utilized to set up more alert towers and to strengthen emergency operation in other parts of the coastal and adjoining districts.
“Under EWDS, area specific disaster (based on cyclone prediction) warning will be disseminated to the community while the alert can be activated at any time from the emergency operation centres in the state, district or block level. The idea is to alert the last person at the remotest corner in the coastal area about an impending disaster within minutes,” said an official.
Odisha with around 480 km of coastline, had faced some of extremely severe cyclones in the past eight years including Phailin (2013), Hudhud (2014), Titli (2018), Fani (2019) and Amphan (2020). Though the state government had managed to reduce loss of lives in the cyclones due to its preparedness, the cyclones have caused huge loss to property.