Preamble:

Adi Shankara Trust, Kalady hosted the second most populated flood relief centre, offering food, shelter and clothing during the August 2018 deluge that engulfed a significant segment of Kerala State. At the behest of Sri Anand K., the Managing Trustee and MD of Adi Shankara Trust, Professor Jaisankar, the COO of the Trust remained at the helm of affairs during the rescue and relief providing operations.

Flood relief operations were conducted using the manpower, resources, and infrastructure of the Adi Shankara Trust and it was widely appreciated by the media and government. Several tons of food, clothing, medicines and other resources were distributed by the Trust and hundreds of lives were saved by the Adi Shankara Trust volunteers. One of the volunteers, a student of Adi Shankara Institute of Engineering and Technology, sacrificed his life during the rescue operations.

Rationale for the Institution of the Centre

Despite the display of tremendous cooperation, control of emotions, helpfulness, coordination, trust and bravery of the members of the loosely coordinated Rescue Team, certain intrinsic systemic failures came to light (in retrospection). Keralites who were (until then) in a safe zone needed to prepare themselves to face disasters, modify the behavior to facilitate rescue operations and faster recovery, get trained to be physically and mentally strong enough to face dangers, control panic and remain effective in establishing communication networks during emergencies. All forecasts for the next few years, suggest that climate changes and consequent disasters will be more frequent in Kerala.   Hence, it is of utmost importance to train our people to gain the required skills to face any emergency scenarios or disasters. This thought process becomes the imperative for establishing a Disaster Management Training Centre at ASIET capable of churning out a committed, trained body of volunteers every year who may become available to guard Kerala during times of crises.

About the Training @ASIET

The DMTC@ASIET intends to recruit 200 students every year to become members of a long-term Adi Shankara Task Force. The training will include 100 hours of theory, 40 hours of hand-on training and 40 hours of involvement in on-site assignments. The course offered at ASIET helps the trainees to:

v Prepare a systematic disaster risk management plans 

v develop an emergency response plan during the course of a disaster

v acquire the skills for rescue operation associated with various disasters

Along with the theory classes the trainees will get hands on training in:

1.     Water rescue, making and using country boats, canoe, rowing

2.     Scuba-diving, river rafting etc.

3.     Rappelling, rock climbing etc.

4.     Rope based activities – knots, river crossing, monkey crawl, bridges, obstacle crossing

5.     Fire prevention and firefighting, evacuation, etc.

6.     Trauma care

7.     Spatial intelligence training: map reading, navigation, ground references, visual-signal recognition.