The Achara Flood: 250 Families, One Culvert and a 2.5 m Tide
At 0600 on 26 July the district control room receives an IMD red alert for 220 mm of rain in 24 hours, with high tide at 1430. Achara village, 250 families, lies on the floodplain of a creek. A single causeway connects it to the block town and it goes under at a 2.5 m tide. A licensed fertiliser godown holding ammonium nitrate sacks stands 200 m upstream of the village. The block has 40 civil defence volunteers, two rubber boats, one ambulance, one JCB and no wireless sets; mobile signal is patchy. The higher secondary school, 4 km away on a ridge, can hold 400 people, but its approach road crosses a culvert that floods within an hour of heavy rain. A two-storey temple inside the village can hold 80 people. The SDO must issue a written plan by 1000, and there is no confirmation of whether a second rain spell will follow.
1. What should the SDO do between 1000 and the 1430 high tide, and in what order? Justify the sequence rather than just listing activities.
Read the worked answer
Order the actions by two tests: after what time does each become impossible, and how irreversible is the loss if it is skipped.
- 1000–1015, warn specifically. Convert the alert into a village-level warning through volunteers and the temple, naming the shelter and the cut-off time. A warning that names neither a place nor a time is not a warning.
- 1015–1100, position assets by their fate. Move the JCB to the culvert and the boats to the creek side of the village. Boats parked beyond the causeway are worthless the moment it submerges.
- 1100–1230, evacuate the vulnerable first. Elderly, sick, pregnant women and small children go by ambulance and boat so that the school is reached while the culvert is still usable.
- 1230–1400, move the able-bodied and shift livestock to the raised bund.
- 1400–1430, account for every family by name against the register.
Securing the fertiliser godown is a mitigation task, not a response priority; doing it first would trade lives for property.
2. School or temple as the shelter? Give a reasoned recommendation, the fallback, and the contamination check that must go with it.
Read the worked answer
Use both, but not as equals - the difference is the crossing.
Temple: primary assembly point, because it needs no crossing and is reachable at any hour. It holds 80, so it takes the elderly, the sick and the families of the lowest lanes.
School: the main shelter for the remaining ~170, but only if the culvert is crossed before 1200. Treat 1200 as a hard cut-off, not a target; after that the route is closed regardless of how many people are still on the village side.
Fallback: if rain starts early, the school is abandoned and the temple, the panchayat's concrete building and the raised bund become the shelter. That means tarpaulin, dry food and drinking water must already be at the temple by 1100, not carried there later.
Contamination: the godown 200 m upstream holds ammonium nitrate. Floodwater reaching it will carry nitrate into the creek and shallow wells, so no well or creek water is used for drinking - only stored, chlorinated water - and the PHC is warned to expect gastric cases.
3. Half the village refuses to leave, citing livestock and locked houses. What does the SDO do, and what must be recorded?
Read the worked answer
Persuasion first, documentation always, compulsion last and only through the competent authority.
- Ask for the specific reason. It is usually livestock, an absent earner or fear of theft. Solve that reason: nominate a cattle bund with one volunteer in charge, post a guard for the empty lane.
- Record every refusal in writing - name, house number, time, warning given. This protects the household later, limits the administration's liability, and hands rescue teams a list of exactly who is where.
- Assign one volunteer to every ten refusing households, with a whistle and a torch, and fix a shelter-in-place protocol: move to the upper storey, documents in plastic, never cross moving water.
- Fix a final signal - three long whistle blasts - at which everyone moves upstairs.
- Only if collapse risk becomes imminent does the SDO requisition boats and seek the Sub-Divisional Magistrate's order under the Disaster Management Act, 2005. Forced evacuation without such an order invites resistance and legal exposure.