Fire department to train around 800 civic employees for disaster management

NASHIK: The fire department will be training around 800 civic employees for disaster management for the Kumbh mela. For this purpose, the department has written to the heads of departments asking for names of at least 10 of their staff for training.
Training will be given to the staff of the civic body in batches by various agencies.
"People are under the impression that disaster management is the responsibility of the fire department.It is actually the responsibility of the common people as well. We want to equip our NMC employees with disaster management for the Kumbh Mela. We have asked for a list of at least ten people from each department couple of days back. More than ten would be welcome," said fire chief Anil Mahajan.
The training will begin in a fortnight after the HODs submit the list to the fire department.
"We will be training them in groups comprising of 4-5 members. The training will be given by the state disaster management unit, the national disaster response force (NDRF) or the state or centre approved trainers," said Mahajan.
He said that for the Kumbh Mela the fire department has asked help from National Fire Services College (Nagpur), State Fire Training Academy (Mumbai), municipal corporations of Pune, Thane, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai.
"We have written to the director of Maharashtra services to provide us with the staff of these fire services. Only for National Fire Services College (Nagpur) we wrote to the director of the National Fire Services College around a fortnight back. This college has 120 people while the State Fire Training Academy has 200-300 trainers that can be provided at a time. So, we will have enough people for disaster management," said Mahajan.