Bomb Blasts in Mumbai’s Local Trains
These days a sizeable number of the daily passengers (office-goers) in the local (including inter-city) trains carry Mobiles (cell-phones).
The electronic media is also quite quick in flashing the news about man-made/natural/accidental disasters. And it is the natural human tendency that as soon as such a news is flashed, the well-wishers (near & dear ones) of these travellers start calling them on their said Mobiles—in order to know about their welfare.
These factors can be conveniently used by the Disaster Management Teams in the following ways:-
i) The First Aid worker ensures that the Mobile, if any, is safely secured to the body of the patient (injured) or the dead--when he/she (or the body) is taken to the nearest Hospital/Morgue.
ii) Upon arrival of the patient or the body, the Hospital/Morgue sticks an adhesive band on the wrist (foot etc) of the patient/dead as also on the Mobile (which was secured to the said patient/dead), and endorse (with an OHP-pen) an alphanumeric code on both these stickers. The sticker on the Mobile should also bear a suffix ‘I’ (injured) or ‘D’ (dead).
iii) These cell-phones should be handed over to the Hospital’s Official who is manning the Hospital’s ‘Help-line(s)’—so that as soon as the said Mobile rings, the Official can transmit the information to the caller about the presence of the injured/body in the said Hospital so that the caller is in a position to transmit the same to the injured's/deceased's next of kin, and the Official should also ask the caller if he/she has pertinent information on the said patient 's normal medical condition--for example whether the patient wears a heart-pacer, whether he/she is known to be allergic to any drugs, whether blood-donors are available for his/her blood group from within his family & friends, etc etc.
In the event of calamities, the probability of a call from the closest well wishers is the greatest.
But for "security reasons" the Administration (local Government) jams en bloc all the frequencies used by the Service Providers (like Hutch, Airtel) for the cell-phones--whereas the proper methodology would be to use filters so that only the outgoing calls from the Mobiles are jammed. And certain supervised land-line numbers should ALWAYS be available (open) to the Public for searching their near & dear ones. These ‘open’ numbers may, for example, belong to the telephones installed at the Police Stations, Police Posts etc.
These open land-line numbers should not be jammed. By this method, the Officer in-charge of the Police Station will readily come to know on-the-spot the particulars of the person(s) (residing/working within that police station’s jurisdiction) who will be able to attend to the specific patients or be able to identify the dead.
I am thankful to one of the Visitors to this site for his/her Comments (please click the Link 'Comments'). And this Article has been suitably amended. By the way, I'm a hostel-mate (albeit junior) of Mr. Kashyap (perhaps still IG-Intelligence in Mumbai) who is a Batch-mate of Mr. AN Roy (Police Commissioner of Mumbai); Mr. AS Samra was the Batch-mate of my eldest brother. I have worked in the Military Intelligence and am a 1971-War veteran.>BR>
Let's pool-in our ideas and design a cool, updated, quick & effective Disaster Management website--which can economically & efficiently match needs with resources and should immediately be approachable, in times of need, to the registered & trained Volunteers. This will naturally be better than Governmental websites--which are usually morassed in red tape and time-consuming Administrative, Technical & Financial permissions.
Kindly respond with your e-mail ID and Mobile Number; mine is:-
e-mail: themissociijuris@yahoo.com
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