Countries urged to step up
Governments across the region are being encouraged to take the “urgent steps” required to enhance national programmes which are aimed at improving the resilience of their respective countries.
This has come from Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), Ronald Jackson, who said this includes modernising existing building codes and standards, where they do not exist; legislating such where none exist; and also ensuring that they are properly enforced. He made the comments while speaking to the media during a recent press conference at CDEMA’s headquarters as he reflected on the damage done to countries in the region by Hurricanes Irma and Maria.
He said, “In all the countries that were impacted, we saw housing stock that survived a Category 5+ hurricane, why is that? The cases are not wealthy people alone that I am talking about, I have pictures from the field that I took myself of very low income houses, very poor individuals in their communities that survived. What did they do differently? That is one of the reasons CDEMA is promoting our safer housing campaign, even as we promote our safe schools programme, which is one of our flagship programmes.”
He indicated that the safer housing campaign being embarked upon looks at the issue of design parameters and standards for all types of income households.
“…You have a higher probability of your building stock surviving the event if you build it to the right design parameters, the right standards and it is located in the right place. There were some studies that we have done looking at the impact of climate change on several Caribbean countries, and all of them came back with three actions that were required at the national level, and these three actions they said have the highest return on investment. I think it was three or four,” he said.
Jackson added, “One is building code, addressing the building code and building standards. The other one was early warning systems and early warning is not simply receiving the MET advice, it is transmitting warning and information to the communities, and the communities acting on the warning and information. The other one was land use and environmental protection and the other one was emergency protocols.”
The CDEMA head, reflecting on calls for a regional building code, said given the vulnerability of countries in the region to disasters, it requires at the very least national level advocacy. He made the point while noting that some countries in the Caribbean have created new building codes. He contended that if countries do establish or modernise their building codes, it is imperative that there is enforcement.
“Yes we want to see modernised building codes and we want to see it legislated, but it means nothing if it is not enforced, absolutely nothing if it is not enforced. So we have to also push the argument around enforcement,” he stated.
Jackson’s comments came as he suggested that the building codes and building standards issue needs to be treated as “public/private partnership type of intervention” between Government, the insurance industry, engineers and the planning agencies which receive the applications for development. (JRT)