Crises Disaster Management Cell (CDMC)

Crises Disaster Management Cell (CDMC)

Written by: Mr. Aquil Siddiqui (Work-experience / history given at the end) - 2014

LINK FOR SHARING: http://bit.ly/1sxfie0

Pakistan is facing crises after crises more than any other country in the world. Yet we are nowhere near to establish Crises Disaster Management Cell. We just keep listening this name in the media, but do we exactly know what is the composition of the CDMC and how does it work? I have little experience in this regards outside Pakistan at a company level. Crises Disaster Management Cells takes care of all kinds of disaster emergencies in an organization, locality, city, Province and the country itself and meets the emergencies in a well planned and disciplined manner. CDMC prepares in true sense for all kinds of Disaster emergencies by simulating false disaster scenarios. The practice creates confidence and discipline within CDMC teams. Through these practices they also discover their weaknesses and next time they improve their performance. In the event of actual disaster emergency, they act like a real professional with full confidence and utilize the resources in the best of their abilities.

Structure: 

The composition of CDMC consists of several integrated teams. The responsibilities and functions of each team are different. The teams are guided from the control room of CDMC. The teams which are working on the disaster locations are called Task Force lead by one person called Group Leader (GL). All the GL’s communicate with the central command of CDMC. GL assesses the situation from the location, communicates with CDMC control room and takes orders from the CDMC and his group works accordingly.

CDMC: 

This team sits in a central control room with all the communication and recording gears in the control room. This team is lead by a commander and a deputy commander. All the Task Force representatives are also sitting in the control room. All the communications, instructions and results are recorded with the event timings by a separate team in the same control room.

Task Force Teams: 

These team members are experienced professionals from different departments. They are called Pilot Task Force, Fire Fighting Team, Rescue Team, Evacuation Team, Building debris clean up Team, Electricity and Water supply control Team, Flood control Team, Road Traffic control Team, Police and Law enforcing control Team, Civil Administration Team, Logistic control Team, Environmental control Team and Medical and Hospital Team etc. These Teams should have a single point of contact (SPOC). The SPOC’s are called Group Leaders. They are pre-assigned numbers like GL1, GL2 etc. The GL takes orders from CDMC and supervises his Task Team and communicates with CDMC until he is ordered to terminate his team task.

Emergency: 

The information of an event of emergency is communicated to the CDMC Team as fast as possible by Authorized Authorities. The CDMC team takes no time to assemble in the Control room Cell. Commander declares the nature of emergency to its team and opens the prescribed procedure blue book. The written procedures are laid down in the blue book as per their exercises of the scenarios. He passes orders to all the Task Force Representatives. A Pilot Task Force Team is ordered to assess the first hand situation of the location. After getting the information through the Representative, the commander passes on the next order. The respective representatives mobilize their Task Forces as per the orders of the commander.

All the Task Team GL’s are communicated to be alerted even if their services are not required. All the information, communications, orders of the events are recorded in chronological time based order.

As soon as the Emergency is over, the Total CDMC and Task Force are assembled in one place and go through the debriefing of the recorded events and brain storming on the mistakes and failures and update the procedures if required.

Communication: 

Clear, loud and precise communication between the team members is one key factor in meeting the goal of this whole exercise. The names of the team members should be avoided, it is better to call them by their Team title. Radio communication on a fixed frequency is a better means of communication. The Radio sets should be well equipped with its batteries charged.

WORK-EXPERIENCE / HISTORY OF WRITER – MR. AQUIL SIDDIQUI:

I was a Sr. Control Maintainer (Associate Engineer) in Karachi Nuclear Power Plant. I was responsible to Maintain the Main Computer System to control the Atomic Reactor and the Turbine Generator systems from 1969 to 1977.

In Dubai I worked as Industrial Control System Foreman in Dubai Petroleum Company since 1977 to 2008. I was leading a group of Electricians and Instrument Technicians and general fitters and later I became the Business Analyst to help the company in switching the company manual operation to automation using the software application of SAP and in the end switch the same system from SAP to MAXIMO.

I was a team member of this kind of team in my Oil field Company in Dubai. This is all based upon my experiences. I am basically from Interior Sindh and educated in Karachi and served in KANUPP (Nuclear Power Plant) for 8 years and then in DPC Oil field in Dubai for 31 years.