The Naveen Patnaik Government is planning to add tsunamis and earthquakes to the state’s list of natural calamities, as there are no provisions to deal with them in Orissa’s existing relief code. The matter came under consideration at a meeting of Revenue and Disaster Management officials on Thursday evening. Chief Secretary A K Tripathy, who chaired the meeting, said that only floods, cyclones and droughts are currently listed in the relief code.

In 2005, the Consortium of Indian Scientists had cautioned the Centre that the coastal areas of Mumbai and Orissa could be hit by a tsunami in the recent future due to undersea earthquakes in the South Asian region. A study undertaken by the Orissa State Disaster Mitigation Authority in 2007 had identified 328 coastal villages in the districts of Puri, Jagatsinghpur, Ganjam, Kendrapara, Bhadrak and Balasore as tsunami-prone. These villages are located within 1.5 sq km from the sea. Officials said cities like Bhubaneswar , Cuttack and Sambalpur were covered under the Urban Earthquake Vulnerability Reduction Project. Other areas such as Mahanadi delta and some parts of Balasore and Mayurbhanj were also put under earthquake risk zone-3.

Orissa, of course, is no stranger to natural calamities and has endured at least 17 droughts, 20 major floods and eight cyclones between 1965 and 2006, officials said.

Incidentally, a World Bank report said that natural calamities are eating into funds allocated for development in the state. Between 2002 and 2007, the state spent Rs 53.87 billion on development programmes while it Rs 66.77 billion were expended on the mitigation of natural calamities. The report added that between 2002 and 2006, the cost of relief far exceeded the development expenditure in Orissa.