The Odisha state fire services has decided to frame a new manual that would enable better efficiency and functioning of the organisation. Since 1942, the body had been following the Odisha police manual of 1940.
“We have constituted a committee under the chairmanship of our additional director general of police (fire services and home guards) Soumya Mishra. The Odisha fire service Act 1993 had the mandate to prepare its manual. We are hopeful of drafting our manual in the next three or four months”, said Satyajit Mohanty, the director-general of police (fire services and home guards).
The fire directorate is a unique organisation in the country with the dual responsibility of conventional firefighting as well as disaster management response. These special responsibilities call for an exclusive set of protocols and rules. The wing has already earned appreciation from different states for having extended its helping hand in carrying out rescue and restoration work during natural calamities. Recently, a team under the directorate also helped out West Bengal cope with the aftermath of ‘Amphan’.
The disaster management training was included in the fire service training programme after the catastrophic super cyclone in 1999 that killed over 10,000 people. “Our state is vulnerable to natural calamities like cyclones and floods that occur very often. The state government laid emphasis on effective disaster management after the 1999 super cyclone. We started training them on skills of carrying out rescue and restoration activities during calamities”, commented another fire official.
Currently, a total of 341 fire stations with around 5,000 personnel exist across the state. The fire stations are also known as fire and emergency response centre (FERC), and as the name suggests, the fire services personnel are subjected to rigorous training every month. The organisation has three training centres — Odisha fire and disaster response academy (OFDRA) in Bhubaneswar, Odisha fire and disaster response institute (OFDRI) at Naraj in Cuttack district, and Odisha state watermanship and lifeguard institute (OSWALI) at Ramchandi in Puri district.