The Director General National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mrs Zubaida Umar has convened a pivotal meeting of management and zonal directors to strengthen flood response and operational readiness of the Agency to disasters in the country.
NEMA’s Head, Press Unit, Manzo Ezekiel disclosed this in a statement signed on Thursday.
The meeting which was held in Abuja also reviewed the status of flood situation in the country and response carried out so far as well as commitment by the stakeholders especially the State Emergency Management Agencies (SEMAs) to incidents in their own areas.
The Director General NEMA, Mrs Umar directed the zonal directors to strengthen synergy with the SEMAs in prepositioning rescue equipment and facilities available for immediate deployment in the event of flood in their various areas of responsibilities and report same to the Emergency Coordination Centre that has been opened at NEMA Headquarters in Abuja.
Moreover, she harped on the imperatives for timely response to save lives and property, adding that rapid assessments must also be conducted of flood incidents to determine any further action to be taken towards supporting the affected persons.
The Director General also said the zonal directors should leverage on existing partnership with stakeholders, particularly the military to request for supports of their Disaster Response Units (DRUs) to deploy necessary resources and equipment for search and rescue operations.
Mrs Umar further held an interactive meeting with the general staff in Abuja where she informed the technical officers at the headquarters to brace-up for possible deployment across the states to beef-up response interventions to overwhelming flood incidents.
It could be recalled that the Agency, in furtherance of its proactive flood risk management, had activated all Zonal, Territorial and Operation offices of the Agency nationwide to work with the State Emergency Management Agencies (SEMAs) within their area of responsibilities to carry out rescue operations and conduct assessment of the situation.
Consequent on the activation, NEMA Search and Rescue officers in the zones were deployed across the states with flood incidents where they have been supporting in coordination of rescue operations with SEMAs and other stakeholders.
With increasing flood incidents, the Director General National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mrs Zubaida Umar further inaugurated Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) at the headquarters in Abuja to monitor and coordinate timely deployment of resources for search and rescue in support of the zonal, territorial offices nationwide.
In addition to the EOC, the DG NEMA also activated the Situation Room at NEMA headquarters in Abuja for flood data collection, processing and dissemination of authentic information from incidents sites.
