Patnaik inaugurates BIMSTEC Disaster Management Exercise in Bhubaneswar

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday inaugurated Seven Nation BIMSTEC Disaster Management Exercise - 2020, which will take place from February 11 to 13.

The exercise is being organised by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) in Odisha, on behalf of the Government of India.

Representatives of BIMSTEC member countries from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and India participating in the exercise, Bhutan and Thailand are not participating this time.

"Nepal is part of BIMSTEC and similar kind of exercise took place in 2017. Nepal also faces similar kinds of disaster problems. So, these kinds of exercise and workshops will definitely help the county," a representative from Nepal told ANI.

The objective of this exercise is to test the existing emergency procedures for notification, preparedness and emergency response, during a major earthquake and flood scenarios and to enhance the coordination and co-operation involving multi-agency operations in an earthquake, flooding and storm surge.

The exercise will also test multi-stakeholders coordination in a disaster scenario involving international, national, state, district and local agencies.