Techie death in Noida sparks mock drowning drill in Gurugram

A senior district official said the nighttime exercise was conducted to assess preparedness under challenging conditions, including poor visibility and fog, similar to the circumstances of the Noida incident.

The Gurugram district administration along with police and other agencies carried out a mock drill for drowning rescue at a pond in Sector-53 on Wednesday night to check response time and emergency preparedness of the city’s first responders, officials said on Thursday. The exercise comes in the backdrop of the drowning of a 27-year-old techie in Noida last week.

“Our aim is to improve the response time and keep the rescue workers well-prepared,” DC Kumar said.

A senior district official said the nighttime exercise was conducted to assess preparedness under challenging conditions, including poor visibility and fog, similar to the circumstances of the Noida incident.

According to officials, deputy commissioner (DC) Ajay Kumar, deputy commissioner of police (east) Gaurav Rajpurohit and several other senior officials were present at the spot in Saraswati Kunj. Officials said the DC also chaired a meeting on Thursday to assess the drill and seek details from officials on any further required steps for improvement.

“Our aim is to improve the response time and keep the rescue workers well-prepared,” DC Kumar said.

As part of the drill, police along with fire department and state disaster response force carried out a rescue operation as per the standard operating procedure.

Officials said that a mock alert about the drowning of a 12-year-old boy in the pond was sent to the police control room via helpline number 112. The fire department received the alert at 10.42pm and, within a minute, a fire tender left the Sector-29 fire station while a rescue tender was deployed from the Sector-37 station, an official said.

“A rescue tender consists of equipment meant for operations in water, such as ropes, cutters, spreaders, breakers and most importantly inflatable motorised boats.” He added: “After reaching the spot, rescue workers were deployed in the water on boats to carry out a dummy search.

According to officials, the rescue workers returned from the spot at 2.45am after getting clearance from the senior officials.

DCP (headquarters) Arpit Jain said the mock drill was aimed at checking preparedness for handling various kinds of emergency situations.

“Gurugram has its separate challenges for which the first responders always need to be well prepared and equipped,” DCP Jain said.