Mock drill on quake preparedness held in Ghaziabad

Ghaziabad, June 28 (IANS) The Ghaziabad district administration on Friday conducted a mock exercise to take stock of the city's earthquake preparedness, officials said.

Additional District Magistrate (ADM), Finance, Sunil Kumar Singh said the drill was also conducted in the 18 districts of the National Capital Region (NCR) of Uttar Pradesh, NCT and Haryana which fall under seismic zone 4 where quakes are expected to be of higher magnitude on the Richter scale.

Talking about Ghaziabad, the ADM said the population density is too high in these districts and since high rise buildings have also come up, chances of fatalities are quite high.

The mock drill was conducted at Kavi Nagar Ram Leela ground, from where the teams were dispatched to five places -- Gaur Central Mall, GDA office, New Bus Stand Metro station, Columbia Asia Hospital and VVIP Society in Raj Nagar Extension.

Some of the high rise buildings in this region are at risk since the soil is soft till about a depth of 25 metres.

Experts believe that if a quake measuring 7 on the Richter scale occurs here, 2 per cent population of the estimated 3 crore people in these 18 districts will suffer instant fatalities.

In Ghaziabad, an Incident Response System (IRS) was formed with an office containing three organs -- planning, logistics and operations.

The operation, in case of any disaster, would be executed by personnel from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Civil Defence, police, Rapid Action Force (RAF), Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC), army, air force and volunteers from NGOs, Singh said.