The Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) needs to be restructured into a full-time independent body under the government with experts dedicated to managing a range of disasters that the State is vulnerable to, Anil Kumar Sinha, co-chair, UNDRR ARISE FICCI Network for India, has said. Mr. Sinha, also the founder vice chairman of the Bihar State Disaster Management Authority, was in the city on behalf of the Centre for Disaster Management of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, the apex level training institute for civil servants, to study last year’s Kerala floods and document the good practices. Mr. Sinha, who met heads of departments and agencies and visited Pathanamthitta and Idukki districts, spoke to The Hindu about his observations on the State’s preparedness. The SDMA should be restructured into a body like the National Disaster Management Authority or those in the States of Bihar, Odisha or Gujarat, he said. The emergency operation centre at the SDMA left a lot to be required, he said. The centre should be an entity that provided control and command in the event of a disaster. It should be state-of-the-art multi-hazard resistant facility where those in command could seal themselves in for 14 to 21 days till the situation was under control. For this, it should have adequate food, water, medicines, power, and so on, he said. He said his visits to two panchayats in Idukki had revealed that they had no disaster management plans.There were also problems with identification of beneficiaries of relief. However, given that Kerala had not faced a disaster of this magnitude in over a century, the State had done very well. The role by Kudumbashree and fishermen was commendable, he said.