D J Venkatesh
Port Blair, Nov 21: On one hand the Andaman and Nicobar Administration is conducting massive disaster drill and one the other hand a single uprooted tree, has showed the level of disaster preparedness by blocking Andaman Trunk Road, the life line of A & N Islands, for eleven long hours today.
According to report, a Gurjun tree measuring about 35 metres fell on ATR road at Haribay between Mayabunder and Diglipur yesterday night at 2PM. The Asst. Commissioner got the information in the morning 7 am. He along with other revenue staffs comprising R.I. Manoj Kumar,R.I. Gafoor Ali, and three staffs from Police Fire Service (along with Portable Chain Saws), Two J.E. from APWD along with 20 personnel, S.I from P.S. Kalighat reached the spot. Forest Rangers from Aerial Bay and Mayabunder also attended the site.
Due the felling of the tree the ATR was completely blocked and both the side the vehicles were stranded along with all the passenger buses. The hand sawing tools, brought by forest department were of no use to cut the tree.
Using the portable chain saw and using all available resources the team however able to clear the road at about 1 PM today. A Special Convey through Jarawa area was made available for the stranded vehicles. All the bus passengers of Express buses from Diglipur side felt uneasy as they were supposed to take their breakfast at 6 am at Rest camp at Mayabunder but didn’t even get water at that place.
With all available resources the administration finally cleared the road at 1 PM. Speaking to Andaman Sheekha the Asst. Commissioner Dr. Vivek Kumar said that ‘Due to small chain saw it took about 5 hours to complete the task. If big and better equipments are made available then those will be useful to deal with such incidents in future as the disaster never comes by knocking. He said that the District Administration has now decided to purchase such big and better equipments. In the last one month three such incidents have been reported from North Andaman region.
To be critical such delay is unacceptable considering the fact that Andaman already has a massive department called Disaster Management with sufficient funds. On the positive node, the efforts of the officers and workers to clear the road, using only small chain saws, must be lauded.
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