How Chennai reacted to the recent natural calamity – Some key lessons learnt from a survivor

A natural calamity is unavoidable by any means. Be it the Hurricane Katrina, Great Tsunami of 2004, innumerous big earth-quakes, Tornadoes, Volcanic eruptions – Humans are at risk when these tragedies strike. At these testing times, a lot of outstanding champions emerge, humanity thrives, and lessons of brilliant leadership, post calamity lessons improve the quality of life forever.

I got affected by the recent #ChennaiRains and #ChennaiFloods in a big way. Being cut-off from the most of the world and a quality time spent with my family and in a way transported to early 1970s or 1980s, certain thoughts came to the fore.

I was impressed by the way citizens of Chennai conducted themselves. It was humanity over selfishness across the board wherever I saw. Be it guidance for motorists to navigate the water logging safely, brave new ideas to rescue and transport people stranded in neck deep water, offer for help across the board, creative and positive use of social media, Radio stations and Social responsibility of citizens made me become stronger in my view that basic human values thrive and is at its best.

Nature is a great leveler. Be it a millionaire or a daily-wage earner, it leveled people to an extent where everyone was looking for a safe aboard and relief for food and amenities, waiting atop the high-rise buildings or nearest taller locale.  This calamity of epic proportions (worst in more than 100 years) caused major firsts – among them a newspaper missing its print in over 135 years of operations in India, rivers over-flowing in bridges across the arterial roads in the city.

Keeping the citizen responsibilities on one side, when it comes to the readiness of the Government and Administration, a lot can be left unsaid. There were brilliant officers planning the rescue and relief efforts in a brilliant fashion. Yet, it was all reactive.

Some key questions / lessons learnt are

1. Have a fail-safe Disaster Recovery Measure

• Are the Governments/Administrations ready to respond quickly to address such natural calamities of epic proportions?
• Be it Tsunami of 2004, Rains of 2002 or 2005, Chennai has been reactive to respond. It would have been better, if the readiness was well-planned. Especially when you have million+ people living close to shores areas of high-risk
• Are the Urban Planning Mechanisms well planned and executed to address 100+ years urban growth needs?
• This is an area of major concern and the Master Plans for the city needs to be re-planned to address future needs

2. Have faith in Humanity – People are best and humanity is at its best at troubled times

• As mentioned in an earlier para, this natural calamity became a big leveler of sorts. People ignored, caste, creed, faith and socio-economic status to help the people in need. This was seen across the board (at least from what I’ve seen). Only positivism in times of calamity. People were more tolerant, zero road-rage, care to help everyone was seen across the board.
• A lot of creative use of simple amenities were used for rescue operations. Be it a mini-boat made up of oil tanks or a dish antenna, use of ropes/wires to pass food packets like a cable car across flood affected areas, people were at their creative best.
• People turned to chat without internet (such as FM Radio which did a brilliant job, fire chat etc.)
• Chennai showed innumerous cases of #HumanityFirst – See a compilation at https://thynkfeed.com/restored-faith-in-humanity/

3. Make Righteous use of amenities and make core services available all the times

• Few major issues resulted in disaster getting aggravated
• While the forecast was accurate about major rains, the forecast on “How big” was not clearly known. This resulted in ad-hoc planning and a major decision of 4-5 times the planned volumes of water outflow from major lakes resulting in a major flood.
  • Should and could’ve been planned better
• Power grid failure due to the floods and situation getting aggravated by a calamitous situation, electrocution risks etc.
  • Again – It should have been thought through and planned better
• Major mobile network failures
  • Majority of the mobile towers went out of service resulting in major issues to the common citizens

4. Become an accountable and righteous citizen to make your communities better

• A lot of issues were encountered by the citizens. But the majority of the citizens I saw, sprung to action to support the common people to get to safety.
• Facebook, WhatsApp, FM Stations all sprung into to actions of positivity. Like NGO efforts it needs to be seen how many benefited vs. the people using these medium getting publicity. Come what may, the volunteers did a fantastic job
• With citizen effort, you can make your communities better.
• There were occasions of people trying to make more profit, taking advantage of the situation, whilst some giving free food, accommodation, amenities to those in need

5. Governments/Administrators need Learn a Lesson – and make it a better society for citizens

• It's quoted that Odisha government did a fantastic job in preparatory rescue efforts in advance of 48 hours after a cyclone alert.  Similar Disaster readiness effort needs to be driven across in a uniform manner.

6. Have a solid plan for prevention of reoccurrence.

• Chennai was harmed in 2002, 2004, and 2005 and again in 2015. While other years didn’t face such a situation like 2015, a solid preparatory measure should have been carried out and a master plan to address these should be in place
• Put in place high quality water drainage systems such as in Singapore and water deferral systems such as the ones in Netherlands to reduce impact of a calamity.
• Mobile Networks and essential service needs to have a back-up/recovery situation to ensure that people in need are supported in case of such calamities.

Again – It was a tough week indeed. Brighter side of the situation was that I was able to spend time with my family without a need to work in my laptop, send emails, work on my mobile, watch TV but talk and address nitty-gritty questions from my daughters. Like the MasterCard advert, this is priceless. These dark clouds causing furious rains did have a brilliant silver-lining for me personally.

Another Cyclone is expected over the weekend and the scar is not fully over. But with the brilliance shown by the Chennaites, it is a true story of Humanity and Heroism saving the day. 

My thoughts are with the thousands of people affected by #ChennaiRains and I hope the city sprinkles back to normalcy. With the positivism shown by the city, it is definitely a reality and Chennai will emerge stronger than it was, albeit with a big scar in its body that may take a while to heal.

Comments Welcome.

#ChennaiRains #ChennaiFloods #HumanityThrives #GetBackAgainChennai #RainOfTheCentury

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