WESTERN BUREAU:
THE CARIBBEAN Disaster Emergency Reponse Agency (CDERA) has warned CARICOM leaders to take precautionary steps to ensure that they do not suffer any adverse effect in what promises to be busy hurricane season. Speaking against the background of the US$3.4 million damage the region has suffered from hurricanes, storms and floods since 2000, CDERA told the regional leaders that it did not believe that some countries were as prepared as they should be and urged them to take steps to prepare themselves against the economic loss they could suffer.
In a bid to get the region properly prepared, CDERA issued a six-point message to the leaders, which is aimed at helping them to get their respective countries ready to take on whatever eventualities they might face this hurricane season.
They were urged to:
Assess the national state of preparedness, if it has not yet done so, in order to devise measures that must be addressed to improve local relief and response co-ordination.
Hold an annual preparedness exercise in order to test their response system.
Review local arrangement for financing emergency response and relief.
Become familiar with the procedures to fast-track emergency relief financing from agencies such as the Caribbean Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.
Adopt a National Comprehensive Disaster Management (CDM) strategy, which would serve as a platform for reducing the price tag on human life and the economy.
Ensure that disaster management and relief measures are placed on the 10-year review plan of the United Nation Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island States, which was held in Barbados in 1994 and is slated for review in 2004.
CDERA told the Caribbean leaders that Tropical Storm Lili, which they described as weak and disorganised but caused millions of dollars in damage, showed up the vulnerability of some states in the Windward Islands, something they think should be guarded against in the future
"For the lowest level of cyclonic systems, the losses experienced in the Windward Islands were too high for comfort," said Jeremy Collymore, CDERA's co-ordinator in an address to the leaders. "Such a system in the Leeward Islands would have been described as a significant event."
He said the Caribbean had now entered a new era in an upsurge in hurricane activities. According to him, in the 1960s there were 16 disasters; 41 in the 1980s, 41 in the 1990s, which included seven major hurricanes with wind speeds of over 111 miles per hour.
In further making his case, Mr. Collymore said that since 2000 cyclones have left a track of damage valued at billions of US dollars in Belize from hurricanes Mitch, Keith, Iris and Tropical Storm Chantal. During the same period, he said Jamaica suffered more than US$800 million in flood damage.
- A.F.
