Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are a major element of Internet of Things (IoT) networks which offer seamless sensing and wireless connectivity. Disaster management in smart cities can be considered as a safety critical application. Therefore, it becomes essential in ensuring network accessibility by improving the lifetime of IoT assisted WSN. Clustering and multihop routing are considered beneficial solutions to accomplish energy efficiency in IoT networks. This article designs an IoT enabled energy aware metaheuristic clustering with routing protocol for real time disaster management (EAMCR-RTDM). The proposed EAMCR-RTDM technique mainly intends to manage the energy utilization of nodes with the consideration of the features of the disaster region. To achieve this, EAMCR-RTDM technique primarily designs a yellow saddle goatfish based clustering (YSGF-C) technique to elect cluster heads (CHs) and organize clusters. In addition, enhanced cockroach swarm optimization (ECSO) based multihop routing (ECSO-MHR) approach was derived for optimal route selection. The YSGF-C and ECSO-MHR techniques compute fitness functions using different input variables for achieving improved energy efficiency and network lifetime. The design of YSGF-C and ECSO-MHR techniques for disaster management in IoT networks shows the novelty of the work. For examining the improved outcomes of the EAMCR-RTDM system, a wide range of simulations were performed and the extensive results are assessed in terms of different measures. The comparative outcomes highlighted the enhanced outcomes of the EAMCR-RTDM algorithm over the existing approaches.