Kalam for teamwork in disaster management
by Gaurav Shrivastava

    Quezon city (Philippines): While disaster management is the need of many developing countries today, President APJ Abdul Kalam, who is in the second leg of his three-nation East Asia swing, said that the problems like earthquake and tsunami are not country specific but have international ramifications. He called for countries to cooperate to deal with the natural calamities. The Indian Head of the State visited the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS). The government agency PHIVOLCS is mandated to monitor earthquake occurrences in Philippines that registers tremors of and on. When asked about India-Philippine exchange of expertise in dealing with disaster management, President Kalam said: "Definitely, that's what I was discussing. "Tsunami and earthquake are not only national, it is international, somewhere it occurs -- the earthquake, tsunami you get somewhere else. So it's an international problem. Naturally many countries have to cooperate and that work has started in India. For example, Iceland and India are cooperating in that, Philippines would join in that," he said.

    Taking about the disaster management system in India, Kalam said: "An agency, disaster management agency, Government of India has been established now. I have signed a bill and so it has come into action. The team has been formed and states are trying to form it and the work has started." President Kalam also had a ride on an 'Earthquake Simulator', where he felt tremors up to 7.1-rector scale. Talking to the experts during a presentation of the Philippine earthquake and tsunami monitoring system President Kalam said: "I am trying to enlist people, who say -- forecasting earthquake is possible." Almost all types of geological hazards occur in Philippines except hazards associated with glaciers and seasonal snowfall. Hazards arising from volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and other related geotectonic phenomenon such as landslide, tsunami and faulting are the most mitigated ones due to the recently of their occurrence.

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