This 40yrs old institute has trained thousands of officers in various areas like fire fighting, rescue, control-communication and disaster management. This training is given completely free of cost!
(It’s well said that all best things in the world are free)
How ever you need to the service order from your regional units.
(It’s well said that all best things in the world are free)
How ever you need to the service order from your regional units.
Civil Defense Staff College, mumabi
(Staff College Building, the Fire engine parking area)
(Model s depicting different types of knots)
(Real Bombs, used in 1965 war)
UXB stands for unexploded bomb. This is am advanced course held by civil defense staff college-Mumbai for civil defense corps, police and fire brigade. Participant for this course are expected to have basic knowledge about civil defense services.
Theory studies
The duration of the course was 10days, daily 10am to 5pm.
Every day there would be two lectures and practical sessions. We learnt types of bombs, capacities, working mechanisms, triggering, fuses etc. I being from science background all this was simple for me, but i was very complicated for others! I was the only one from science back ground between students & EVEN STAFF! :-)
So I had many times I had fights with the instructors about simplest things..
I respect them for their hard earned practical knowledge and experience but couldn’t tolerate when he started saying Chromosomes are only in bones (!) Rest all guys too had absolutely on idea what the hell it was. So they were in happily nodding heads left right! But when the prof started saying that DNA IS IN BLOOD, NOT IN CELLS... I gave up!
Not his fault as he didn’t have science background..
The lectures were informative and interesting, however i found the syllabus to be little obsolete. I feel they should keep touch with cutting edge technology.
The duration of the course was 10days, daily 10am to 5pm.
Every day there would be two lectures and practical sessions. We learnt types of bombs, capacities, working mechanisms, triggering, fuses etc. I being from science background all this was simple for me, but i was very complicated for others! I was the only one from science back ground between students & EVEN STAFF! :-)
So I had many times I had fights with the instructors about simplest things..
I respect them for their hard earned practical knowledge and experience but couldn’t tolerate when he started saying Chromosomes are only in bones (!) Rest all guys too had absolutely on idea what the hell it was. So they were in happily nodding heads left right! But when the prof started saying that DNA IS IN BLOOD, NOT IN CELLS... I gave up!
Not his fault as he didn’t have science background..
The lectures were informative and interesting, however i found the syllabus to be little obsolete. I feel they should keep touch with cutting edge technology.
(Training rooms)
(various informative charts)
But the underlined fact is, you don’t get this type of training anywhere else! Plus here it’s for free! Win-win situation.
Model Simulation study
In the model room there are 2, almost room sized big tables. On this a mini replica of city has been modeled for simulation purpose. It had various landscapes like buildings, grounds, bridges, rain lines, ship docks and what not!
In our exercise, they gave us a war scenario where the city had been a target of enemy bombarding! Bridges broken some buildings demolished some under fire, oil refinery that can blow up any moment and on top of it, a 250 ton bomb lying around in heart of the city!
Impossible looking scenario... And now we as control officers were asked to analyze the situation and write am "Incidence Control Report".
Tough job if thought in real time!
The bomb could explode any time which had oil tankers and civil areas in its effective range so first we created evacuation plan by estimating the capacity of bomb, also created sandbag barriers, and trenches.
Now Due to the collapsed bridge, transport has dead, so the rescue teams couldn’t reach the fire areas. The other way to send the vehicles vie rail crossing. but this route was in bomb's sensitive range. so we put a speed restriction of 5m/h.
So many issues have to be handled like which roads to block, how to manage traffic, where to take the casualties...
Trrrang.. The bell rang! And I found out that it was whole 2hrs had passed! This exercise was really really a great way to bring out creativity and imagination!
Indoor UXB search operation
1500hrs we were informed about a bomb kept in the ground floor of staff college. Dressed in dungaree’s we started with search operation. "Look for such an object that should not 've been there" ,instructor told us. So now here I was, leading a search team of 4 guys, looking for Bomb !
Dark store yards to medical room to a dark theatre
Real life it must be so scary! you are looking for some object, what color is it??, what shape it has?? how does it look?? NO clue at all!
And device is patiently waiting in some corner, carefully hearing for your footsteps, body temperature, sound or even light from your torch! Its Ready to blow itself with enormous blast...just waiting to get triggered.. Just waiting!
Even the idea was scary. But none other in my team taking this exercise seriously were roaming around, lifting & shifting things around as if looking for some lost underwear!
:-/
We searched all the corridors, old junk shelves, under the tables.. even toilets! No luck, till we notices a black bag stuffed behind office door! Unmistakenly a BOMB as no one from office staff claimed it!
We filed a report in the format instructed, and hurrray... Back to base!
Outdoor UXB search operation
It was noon and we were asked to assemble in the staff college grounds with dungaree uniform. Objective was to locate a bomb that was hypothetically been dropped from am aircraft but is it fell in soft wet muddy soil, so could not explode!
Mmm.. Isn’t this ground too small to search for a bomb?
According the theory the search is made in sectors, each party separated from other by 150m so that, even if by mistake the bomb goes off, not all the teams loose their lives..
To protect (at least try to protect) your body from possible explosion, one should stay as close to ground as possible. so we were actually crawling on the ground looking out for a bomb, some Colored Body with a tail unit!
Grrr... Even if the ground was covered with soft and lush green grass, crawling was not so much fun so soon we gave up! When instructor saw over tired and sweaty faces, he gave us a hint that, they’d hidden the bomb near the fencing! We started search with new vigour. looked for skid marks, trenches, entry holes and all the marks we were taught to look for! But all in vain! We were really jealous at the other team who was resting and chitchatting on that lush green grass as they had already found it! Aaaand here were we.. Hopelessly searching for a bomb in bushes full of rotten leaves, garbage and what not!
"whats this??" said poonam in boring tone, holding out a red colored tapering object...
Wow! That was it, we'd found the uxb , but we'd not only touched it, but also lifted it and rotated it from all possible angles !!! hussh thank god the instructor didnt watch us doing so! @_@
Sand bag exercise
This was the last practical exercise in our training.
When a uxb is found, to reduce the effect of blast, sandbag wall is made around it. But the job is not easy as it sounds!
We started right from DIGGING THE SOIL! Did you know that you can take out the dug soil fast outta pit in "3" ways when working in team?! The bags have to be filled up only 70% so they can be moved around and arranged atop each other. After few hrs the bags were ready.
Next part was to carry the bags near the bomb. One has to stay right angle to the location of bomb so that least area of body is in line with the bomb. The sand bag has to be kept in the front and one has to crawl, using the bag as shield!
The for enough protection surrounding sandbag wall should be at least 6 feet tall & 3feet thick!
Soooo after long time with Greatest efforts we managed to create a very very tall wall around the dummy bomb which was 1foot thick and whole TWO FEET TALL! :-)
Final exam
After 9 days of training now it was time to show what we had learnt!
Exam had theory & practical of 50marks each. Theory was multiple choice qns. For the practical exam we used the map that we had made in first few days. The map was on full size paper depicting the neighboring area of Metro, Bombay hospital and marine lines, with all roads major buildings and all.
We had to assume a bomb located near marine lines bridge and create am incidence control plan.
From the given specs we calculated the bomb to be of 3.5feet long, having 12"diameter and weighing 500 pound. So the full effective range came to be radius of 50m from ground zero. Exercise was similar to the one we did previously. We marked which roads to block. How and where to evacuate which people. Created and filed the report and that’s it !
Creating bombs
PS: Those who read this blog with interest in creating a bomb.. I am really
Sorry!
THEY DIDNT TEACH IT !
Creating a bomb is a (wicked) child’s play! The only difficult or say impossible thing is to get the stuffing material.
Overall the course was a wonderful & knowledge enriching experience. Plus you get a certificate which could be really a gem in your cert. file.
So dear friends to find out more about civil defense, feel free to ask me.
To serve the nation you neednt be in only Army or Air forse. You can very well do it being a civilian....
Join Civil defense
