Cape Town - The City of Cape Town’s Disaster Risk Management Centre (DRMC) is conducting an exercise on Wednesday, 28 March 2018 to test the vehicle drive-through configuration of the planned points of water distribution (PODs).
"While Day Zero has been deferred, subject to Team Cape Town’s efforts to continue lowering water usage, the City’s emergency preparedness planning continues to ensure our readiness in the event that dams reach critical levels and forces the shutdown of the reticulation network to individual properties," the City said in a statement.
"The DRMC has been working to ensure that the PODs can be effectively managed. This involves anticipating what strategies households and businesses will employ to meet their water needs in the event of Day Zero and how these strategies can be supported by designing and managing the PODs in a way that ensures water collection can be made quickly and safely.
"The aim of the exercise is to test different layouts to see which configuration is most efficient and safe; to collect data on how long it will take to fill containers; and to assess staffing and other operational requirements. The exercise will further evaluate the impact of potential traffic congestion on the on-site operations and the surrounding area.
"City staff are participating in the exercise which aims to have several hundred vehicles passing through the POD. There will be a debriefing session after the exercise. The lessons learnt from the pilot will inform the DRMC’s planning going forward," the City said.