Be more prepared

A Government minister has expressed disappointment at Barbadians’ unpreparedness during the power and water outages that occurred last month, and is urging all to be better prepared should disaster strike.

The Minister of Energy and Water Resources, Wilfred Abrahams spoke to the media about this on the sidelines of the commissioning ceremony of the 381 kilowatt system Grantley Adams International Airport (GAIA) Solar Photovoltaic System at the Engineering Department of the GAIA Inc., which is part of the Public Sector Smart Energy Programme (PSSEP).

“When the government tells you to store water, it is not sufficient to store a pet bottle or two pet bottles of water, when the BWA keeps telling you that you need on average five gallons of potable water per person, per day. We have been fortunate many times to have been spared the worse of the hurricane season, but odds are eventually something is going to hit us… We were in the hurricane season, if people had actually been paying attention to the messages that kept coming out from the Water Authority, then everybody would have had at least five gallons of water in their house, per person, to take them through in case the water went down for a day,” he said.

Abrahams added, “The amount of people who were caught completely unprepared in the middle of the hurricane season means that we are not taking our preparation seriously.”

He also noted that in addition to the messages of water storage, Barbadians also seem not to be heeding the call not to stock their refrigerators during that six months period, and instead to stock up on dry and canned foods.

“Yes the electricity went down, but the effects of the electricity going down and the water going down were the equivalent of let’s say having a bad storm where the electricity was disrupted for two days. The complaints from Barbadians say it all… The Government can do all it can, the Government can put all the measures in place, that the Government can respond quickly and provide relief … but if people themselves don’t take the necessary steps to ensure they’re protected from any eventuality, then most of what the Government is doing is in vain. People need to take some responsibility now for themselves and their families in the event of disaster,” he stated.

The energy and water resources minister said while his heart “hurt” for everyone that was affected by the outages and he “felt the pain of people”, he believes that as a people we need to truly heed the advisories and get prepared.

“This was a test run, it was a short disruption that caused a lot of inconvenience to Barbadians. I would like Barbadians now to take note of the inconvenience caused by that disruption and start to take the messaging seriously about protecting yourselves and protecting your families,” Abrahams added. (JRT)