Come on, Mommy, it's an earthquake — don’t you know what to do? Duck, cover and hold,” my 6-year-old advised me from under our dining table in Palo Alto in October 2007, one small hand holding on tightly to the shaking table leg, the other on the back of his neck. His 8-year-old sister was already in position. I was the only one confused and frozen, standing directly under the heavy glass chandelier, not quite sure if that deep rumbling really was a quake, whether I should run out the door with my children or stand perfectly still under a sturdy door frame.
Of course theirs was the better response — these kids went to school in quake-prone California, and evidently, they’d been taught what to do in umpteen quake drills in school. I was raised in India, where quakes weren’t as common — and preparing for them even less so. Fate would take care of everything, was the belief that everyone bought into, and presumably still does, going by the number of regular fire drills offices, hotels or schools conduct (exactly zero).
Forget about the actual drills — we’re even missing the awareness. It took the same little boy to point out to me two years later that there were no fire-engines standing by the Ravana that we were about to see go up in flames in a crowded New Delhi market. By age eight, awareness had been unconsciously built into his system, whereas I hadn’t actually even noticed the lack of something so basic. Yet, I’ve witnessed more than a couple of fires up close (one in my own backyard in New Delhi, the scene of a failed barbeque) and experienced the frustration of calling 101 to a constantly engaged tone or bored voice.
Just think — how many of us look for emergency exits in hotels, trains or even in cinema halls we enter? Those red, lit signs aren’t decorative, and unless some idiots bolt exit doors from outside like they did in Upahaar cinema in 1997, they can save lives.
But things may be changing. Perhaps its the two quakes in September, but for the first time I received three separate mass emails from different friends, forwarding quake guides and quizzes.
The common tendency is to dismiss disaster preparedness as western paranoia, especially when the worst doesn’t happen, as in the case of Hurricane Irene. The recent preparation and response to Hurricane Irene was more powerful than Irene itself — and when it left New York unscathed, Mayor Bloomberg was accused of overreacting. At the other end of the spectrum is India which tends to depend on fate and miracles to save its citizens. It was sheer luck, and an alert pantry attendant, that saved Rajdhani Express passengers from being fried to a crisp in April.
But what is even more horrifying is that although the National Disaster Management Authority and the National Institute of Disaster Management have guidelines for every sort of natural and man-made hazard you can think of, neither has any authority to enforce a simple, standard disaster preparedness drill in schools and offices. Or if they do, their chiefs don’t know about it, a quick conversation with Dr Satendra, executive director, NIDM, revealed.
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I’m not saying we have to paralyse ourselves thinking about or preparing for every sort of potential danger and specific disaster. We’ve to live with our childhood fears — mine is of falling into an open manhole. And freak things happen — recently, the emergency exit of my children’s school bus suddenly sprang open on a buzzing expressway. But at a time when bomb blasts are as common as quakes, a general sense of alert awareness and preparedness should become an intrinsic part of our skill set to navigate through life. And it needs to begin with our schools and colleges — drills that can evacuate buildings quickly in case of earthquakes, fires or hidden bombs, reinforced periodically until they get embedded into our very DNA, simple, inexpensive precautions, like storing an emergency kit with a flashlight and first aid in an easily accessible place etc. We can learn the Heimlich maneuver and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation later!
Jyoti Pande is a Delhi-based writer