Delegates inaugurate the workshop in Patna on Wednesday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

The government on Wednesday admitted that hospitals across the state lacked fire safety plans.

“The hospitals are in an urgent need of fire safety management plan. The state will not be in a position to react if fire breaks out in any hospital. We don’t have any fire safety management plan in place,” disaster management department principal secretary Vyas Ji said.

“I urge the National Disaster Management Authority to ensure that all hospitals in the state have their respective fire safety management plans,” he added.

He was addressing a two-day workshop on water, sanitation and hygiene in emergencies. The event, organised by the National Disaster Management Authority in collaboration with Unicef and Oxfam India — a non-government organisation, was attended by emergency specialist at Unicef’s Delhi branch, Sarbjit Singh Sahota, and principal secretary of public health and engineering department, Ravindra Panwar, among others. All of them were unanimous that government should raise its preparedness in dealing with disasters such as floods and drought.

“Flood is a recurring problem in Bihar. While many people loose their lives in flood, those who survive often die of diseases caused by unhygienic conditions. There should be a state-level agency to guide people about post-disaster survival techniques in which people should be made aware of the importance of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene in a post-disaster period,” Sarbjit said.

Panwar said: “Bihar has to fight with two kinds of disasters — flood and drought. The state is also prone to earthquake and falls under seismic zones IV and V, ”

He added that the state government had in the past few years taken many initiatives to ensure facilities to people during disasters.

“We create temporary shelters, relief camps in which we ensure safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene to them. However, providing safe drinking water to people in flood affected areas become difficult sometimes, as some do not want to leave their homes,”Panwar said.

“They prefer to stay on the roofs of their houses and don’t want to move to relief camps. In that case, we airdrop pouches and bottles of mineral water for them,” he added.