Lightning deaths prevention to get priority in US, Bangladesh civil-military exercise

The annual civil-military disaster preparedness and response exercise involving Bangladesh and US armies has begun in Dhaka with special focus on preventing lightening deaths this year.

The Disaster Response Exercise and Exchange, which is commonly known as DREE, is mostly focused on earth-quake response.

“But lightning gets a very important place this year as we witnessed a record number of deaths this year,” said Md Mohsin, a joint secretary at Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, on Monday at a press briefing after the inauguration.

Prime Minister’s adviser for security affairs Tarique Ahmed Siddique inaugurated the 11-day exercise, which will also take place at Sylhet and Chittagong.

This is the first time the exercise will be held outside Dhaka.

The disaster management ministry, the Armed Forces Division of Bangladesh and the US Army Pacific are jointly organising this exercise.

After the inauguration at Dhaka's Army Golf Club, representatives of the three organisations briefed media.

Record lightning deaths

Lightning has become a cause of concern in recent times in Bangladesh. Even on Sep 2O, at least 15 people mostly from rural farming community have been killed and eight more injured when struck by lightning during thunderstorms in three districts.

“So far this year, 2O5 people died of lightning and more than 2OO cattle were killed,” Md Mohsin said. “The figure was much lower even four or five years back,” he said.

In 2O11-2O12, about 185 people were killed by lightning.

He said the nature also changed as “we have usually witnessed lightning between April and June, but now people are even dying in September.”

“So we have prioritised this issue and we’ll discuss in the exercise how to prevent those deaths,” he said, replying to a question.

Representatives of civil and military bodies from the UK, Japan, China, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Nepal are also participating in the exercise, which includes nearly 1OOO participants from 1OO organisations.

The exercise includes both indoor discussions and field training.

Bangladesh leads in the region

Major Joshua Madlinger, chief of the Office of Defense Cooperation in the US embassy in Dhaka, said Bangladesh leads as “an outstanding example” in the regional and international level when it comes to disaster response.

He said the existing relation between the two armies is “wonderful” and this exercise will “take it a new heights”.

Due to the success of the previous exercises, he said, this year it has been expanded to outside Dhaka. “We see greater inclusion of civil-military personnel,” he said.

DREE changes military mindset

Lieutenant Colonel Md Jahangir Alam, GSO-1 Joint Operations, of the Armed Forces Division, said the previous exercises had helped to change military “mindset” while working in disaster situation.

The main success of this exercise was that “we all could come together under one platform and now we know our strength and weakness in disaster response.”

“It has helped to strengthen the civil-military relationships,” he said.

“We could break free of traditional thinking and work under elected public representatives and civil administrations during disaster situation,” he said.

In each exercise, they also identify gaps that need to be addressed for better response to disaster.

He said based on the discussions of the exercise, they also make recommendations to different ministries on what they do to prepare disaster response.