A call has been issued by Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), Ronald Jackson, asking persons to rely on and follow the information given by the officials issuing a notice of a national shutdown, during an extreme weather event.

 

His comments were targeted at Barbadians who sought to question the implementation of an island-wide shutdown, as Barbados braced for the impact of a tropical disturbance from Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. As all of us in Barbados are aware that the severe weather activity that officials at the Barbados Met Office predicted for the midnight to morning period from Tuesday into Wednesday, came later in the day, towards the period of noon actually and this lull in activity fooled a number of Barbadians into thinking that the Met officials somehow got it wrong and the experts could therefore not be trusted. However, as the day passed, many had to eat their words, as the system strengthened and news broke that we would indeed be feeling the effects of Tropical Storm Matthew.

 

As CDEMA’s Executive Director explained, persons should consider that these weather systems are dynamic and can vary in the intensity of their speed without warning. The trained Met officials will give information based on its trajectory, but they cannot definitively predict how a system will choose to behave. What’s more, as Principal of the Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology Dr. David Farrell has pointed out, the fact that rain abates during what is supposed to be a severe weather system, is not an indication that it is now safe to venture outdoors and resume one’s normal activities, especially when no all-clear has been given.

 

Speaking of the all-clear, Barbadians need to be better informed of what this whole national shutdown and reactivation business is all about, as some of them seem not to understand what takes place in such a process and the protocol to be followed. Back in 2014, an announcement was made about the revised national shutdown procedure. It was noted then, that all shutdowns of Barbados in the event of severe weather systems, and any subsequent all-clears, would be given by the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC), based in the Department of Emergency Management (DEM).

 

It was noted that Cabinet had agreed to a revised national shutdown procedure to guarantee a systematic closure of the country in the event of severe weather and its reactivation. This was done to address concerns about the all-clear, namely when the country would be reactivated after the system’s passage and when work and other activities should resume. The new policy was to be widely circulated so that persons would be well-informed. However, it seems that two years later, in 2016, there is still some ambivalence about the process.

 

Getting back to the issue of the impending weather and the reaction of Barbadians when they assumed nothing major was happening, I hope we have seen why we need to trust the experts.

 

Barbadians are often quick to cry down the local Met Office officials, when information issued by the experts does not add up with what they actually experience. However, whilst there was a delay this time based on early predictions, we can see that indeed, the officials were spot on about the activity, even if the timeline was not accurate.