Gujarat has highest concentration and number of chemical industries, several of them highly hazardous and pose grave risk to life and property. Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority was very concerned and they wanted the ‘best in the world consultants’ (their words!) to develop the disaster management plan (DMP). Our sister concern firm PRESTELS partnered with IEM Inc (USA) and NEERMAN (Mumbai) as well as several eminent national and international consultants to execute the project. We were adjugated as the best team for the World bank funded DMP consultancy. Over next three year, we surveyed all hazardous industries, assessed first responders capability and capacity, evaluated organizational and institutional issues, modelled thousands of ‘hazard scenario’ of chemical dispersion, fires, and blasts and created scenarios and decision matrix for response, recovery and rehabilitation. We made comprehensive capacity and resource building recommendations. We even got USEPA to share their software and pocket books for first responders with GSDMA instead of wasting government’s money on reinventing the wheel! (To date India does not have a national level DMP that can match up to Gujarat’s DMP) The defining movement for us was when an officer of GSDMA called us to say how a serious leak from chemical unit was managed with zero casualty!
Read the full DMP here: GSDMA