Tainan City’s Anding District Office held a flood control drill as part of an effort to improve disaster prevention coordination between the district’s different government offices as well as strengthen its ability to carry out emergency operations. On March 28, the 2018 Anding District River Flood Control Drill was held at the then recently dug detention pond for the Anding and Xiwei Drainage Systems. Items on the agenda included 1) setting up and preparing the emergency operations center, 2) the operations of a flood disaster resistant community, 3) disaster alerting and contingency procedures, and 4) post-disaster recovering and rebuilding. Offices that participated in the realistic drill hoped that this practice will help lower the amount of property damage and injuries suffered when disaster strikes in the future.
Anding District Chief Liu Shih-Hsiung expressed that Anding District residents have been traumatized by the threat of flooding ever since 2009’s Typhoon Morakot. Therefore, disaster prevention should have an attitude of facing potential disasters by both knowing the ins and outs of these disasters and being meticulous about protecting the community. Nowadays, disaster contingency is no longer just about a single government office being in charge of handling the entire situation, as different offices need to work together and combine their resources. Even the public and private sectors need to join hands when disaster strikes.
This drill featured a host of different people from the local area, including the Water Resources Agency’s Sixth River Management Office, Tainan City Government’s Water Resources Bureau, the Fire Bureau’s Anding Station, Police Department’s Anding Police Station and Sucuo Police Station, Anding District Public Health Center, Anding District Cleaning Unit, and Tainan City Reserve Command. Also present were the Sulin Village Flood Resistant Community, volunteers from Anding District, and students from Anding Elementary School. Anding District Office hoped that the drill would increase the community’s disaster prevention awareness while making everyday disaster prevention knowledge more practical in nature, thereby helping the public understand that disaster prevention is about engineering projects as well as disaster prevention concepts