Rescue Efforts During Emergency

Any solutions- so that our Indian National Disaster Management establishment can be equipped with?

Yes. They knew 3 days beforehand that very heavy rain was on the way, and allowed the pilgrims to trek to the river anyway.

The best way to respond to a disaster, is to spring into action before it reaches you.

Why respond to a disaster, when most of the human suffering can be prevented in the first place?

I have to agree with Kramarat.

Even in the USA FEMA and other rescue organizations can only do so much.

The real problem is the mind set that the government has your back and is the quintessential safety net for all. Yes, these departments really want to help, but there are always limits.

A better approach is adopting a mind set for individual survival and helping your neighbor.

I am not talking extreme "prepper" mentality, but common sense preparations for the unexpected and to be more self reliant.

I live in a state where hurricanes are a real possibility, too. We also get rain. Faye dumped 30" of rain over a two-three day period here.

It is prudent to, first, understand the risks you live under, second, have a plan to mitigate those risks.

We know we live in area where weather can cause severe damage and possible loss of life. We have mechanisms to predict and track bad weather and we use them.

If things get bad we have a plan. We have a small stock of emergency food, ability to get and purify water, places to go if we need to leave, contact lists, some cash, options to shelter in place, flashlights, candles, etc.

We didn't just go out one day and buy all these things. We did them slowly. We bought and extra can or two of food when it was on sale or candles, flashlights, and other things over time as we could afford them.

All of these things will help keep us out of emergency shelters or the need to rely of some agency to swoop in and rescue us. Of course even the best prepared plans can go wrong, but we are doing our part to reduce the risks and to reduce the load on the public rescue services.

In short, if more people took greater responsibility for themselves there would be more valuable resources available for those people that may really need the help.

I think it is far cheaper to educate people than to have governments build huge safety nets to swoop in and protect the ignorant from natural disasters and the bad choices they made about those disasters.

If you feel otherwise I suggest you read a little about Katrina in the US. Even the most powerful country in the world could not protect people from misery and death after those people willingly choose to ignore pleas for them to leave.

They should have mounted speakers on those helicoptors, and started sounding the warning within hours of knowing that severe weather was approaching.

With a couple of days warning, I think a lot of people would have moved away from the river and up to higher ground.

Maybe, but I really think it all comes down to philosophy. Some people adopt or fall for the idea that someone else or some government entity is going to always be there for them, so they never prepare for any emergency.

Others (and too few of them in my opinion) adopt a philosophy that they need to be self-reliant and not depend on some social safety net.

Those in the former group are simply not going to be proactive about their welfare because they have entrusted their lives to someone else. They expect someone else to make it right for them. With that kind of mindset it is hard to get people to be motivated to do anything by themselves. They always need help.

True. Maybe I'm wrong, but I would think that people in India have a bit more of the self preservation/survival instinct, than people in the US. I think that government has a responsibilty to do what they can to warn people of an impending, potentially lethal event.

If anybody really listens to politicians, they tend to boast about things that they want to do, (with no practical understanding of what they're talking about), as opposed to things that they have already accomplished.

Trusting them to save you in an emergency, is plain foolish.

There were some accidents which discouraged use of air ships. Moreover I do not know if air ship can remain stable in stromy weather. It is casual manner in which all authorities behaved. Slow response was due to lethrgy on part of our politian. Hats off to our Air force and Army Soldiers.

You are right. In inclement weather blimps and dirigibles (ridged airships) can not handle any form of high winds. Ridged airships need to be huge in comparison to their payload, so they essentially become huge sails that require a lot of power to maintain position to counter wind and they move very slowly.

The helicopter (rotary wing aircraft) is the most versatile rescue vehicle we have. Helicopters much more readily manage not only horizontal wind components, but vertical wind components (down and up drafts) found near large buildings and mountains.

Regardless of what type of air ship is employed for rescue, all are limited to the number of people they can carry. For this reason it is far better to simply not get into a predicament that requires air evacuation in the first place.

Politicians are the same around the world.

If you lived in the US, rather than investing in early warning systems, your government would be spending billions on armed response teams and tracking your phone calls and emails to keep you safe from the next natural disaster.

They make huge Defence budgets and make money in form of cuts.

It is essential to anticipate emergencies and prepare in advance. Of course we don't know exactly what happen and when or where but we can make some pretty good guesses.

My business is making portable radio studios that are used by disaster responders (the Ranger 4). I have found two types of agency; one asks, "how quickly can we get equipment and deploy after an event?" The other type looks at parts of the world with a propensity to disasters and trains and equips local teams so they are prepared before the event.

The first category usually fail to deploy at all because it needs more than just equipment. Trained people from the region and culture and who know how to work in the relief environment are essential. If they do deploy it is often at a later phase in the operation.

Evidence shows that getting the right information on air in the first 72 hours saves lives and this is almost impossible without prior training and equipping.

Good recent examples include Feba India and First Response Radio who had a radio team in Uttarkand which began broadcasts within 72 hours of the flooding (using an older version of the portable studio). The BBC Media Action trust have trained and equipped a team in Nepal and First Response Radio have equipped teams in Indonesia who have responded to a variety of disasters.

I am using the example of radio as that is my field, but the principle holds in other areas - prior training and equipping is key to effective response.

Pictures: Training in Nepal

"Prepare for disaster" is easy for an American to say (and do), but might be impossible for the many humans who live on $10/day or less.

There was a company that developed a light-duty semi-disposable cargo glider that could prove useful for such situations. It could be towed behind a small aircraft (how small, I can't remember). I can't hit the right search keywords to find it though.

Their site is blocked by my firewall, but Logistic Gliders (logisticgliders.com) is apparently working on this concept. It's not a new concept at all; (piloted) cargo gliders were used in WWII. Other than the glider landing on someone or landing out of reach of the stranded people, it sounds like the best solution.

I have my doubts about the safety of gliders. A late friend of mine was in the Chindits in the WW2 Burma campaign. In his book Chindit (Richard Rhodes-James, 1980) he recounted how the accident rate with gliders was so high that they sent a burial party to meet each incoming wave of gliders.

I think the most applicable concept is an unmanned cargo trailer with wings and some kind of autopilot. Just don't ship dozens of raw eggs...

Storms on going would mean high winds. Lighter than air ships would be blown away. Probably not the solution

I do agree that India is badly equipped for early warning and evacuation system.

Further evacuation in Himalayan region was being done after the disaster. Roads had been washed away and it was hilly, land slide prone region. Hence only means was to use- by air- Helicopters. Further, it was rainy season and so it would be clear for a few minutes and cloudy . rainy again for a few hours. (is it like the London weather)- which made even use of helicopter rescue difficult. In fact 20 people died in a helicopter crash.

This is one scenario. Another scenario is - we have Pilgrimages to to so many places in Himalayan region (Manasarovar lake, Vaishnodevi temple, Amarnath etc) - where many elderly, women and children use ponies etc to trek all the way. Can this kind of airship be used as an alternative - where airstrip / helicopter landing facilities are not there.

This was my purpose of exploring this means of low cost(hope it is cheap and safe too) of ferrying people. We will also be preserving environment, it will be safe- instead of building roads for such regular use- as the roads will be prone to landslides.

There are ways. The initial cost would be fairly high, but a very small price per rider would recoup the money over time. It would also allow the natural vegetation to retake the hillsides.

Then there is this, but the carbon footprint is not so good...