Bajans urged to prepare for hurricane season

Prepare, prepare, prepare!

That’s the advice Government officials are giving Barbadians as the
country enters the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season. During the press
conference yesterday in the conference room of the General Post
Office, at Cheapside in The City, Director of the Department of
Emergency Management (DEM), Kerry Hinds, while noting that it is not
possible to stop Mother Nature, said that it is possible to reduce our
vulnerability to hazards and therefore implored the public to be more
prepared than they were last year.

“Time and time again we would indicate to persons that they need to
have their emergency plans in place for themselves, for their
families, their businesses; try to ensure that you shore up your
houses and you take the necessary precautions you need to protect
yourselves,” she said.

Hinds added, “As disaster managers we acknowledge that this year there
is an added complexity that the covid-19 environment brings, and the
implications for our emergency management mechanism and operation. We
are ever more mindful of the health, safety and well-being of our
emergency responders and the public.”

In that vein, she said they have been retooling and refining their
plans and procedures under the guidance of the Ministry of Health to
incorporate the considerations warranted by the presence of covid-19.
As such, Hinds said a large part of their efforts is to ensure that
the information is disseminated to the public, so that persons can
prepare themselves as needed.

As part of that effort, the Director said that the DEM will be
increasing the use of the various social media platforms to ensure the
widest dissemination of the messages to the public.

Adding to her comments, Minister of Home Affairs, Edmund Hinkson said
that climate change is impacting the season and the intensity of
systems, several of which have hit countries in the Caribbean. With
that in mind, he said Barbadians cannot afford to be complacent or
take comfort in the saying that God is a Bajan.

“... Because the Lord is also a Dominican, the Lord is also a Bahamian
and those two countries of course as we know in 2017, and last year,
suffered tremendous devastation. In the case of Dominica, 220 per cent
of their gross domestic product gone, and God is a Dominican and
Bahamian as much as he is a Bahamian,” he said.

Hinkson added, “The Lord helps those who help themselves and we have
to therefore prepare. We have no choice, covid-19 or no covid-19, but
to do our best as a country at the level of government, which we are
doing and which we will continue to do; our community; our family; our
individual persons to prepare for any eventuality in terms of
possibility of the advent of hurricanes affecting Barbados and the
wider region this year.”

Noting that it is supposed to be an above average season, he is urging
Barbadians to err on the side of caution, as he reminded that it only
takes one major hurricane to wipe out a country’s housing stock,
economy and infrastructure.

“No one, no human being alive can prevent a hurricane coming to a
country in which they live in, [but] you can do your best to try to
lessen the adverse effects of that natural disaster and to obviously
prepare for the aftermath of the disaster in terms of recovery.”

He continued, “I join in the urge to Barbadians today, on the advent
of a six months official hurricane season, with two storms already
having been in the region, to do your best – do the best you can in
terms of preparing your households, your families, your communities
for what will lie ahead of us.”
(JRT)