Community involvement critical in disaster management

THERE are a number of lessons to be derived from the extreme weather event which impacted sister islands last month.

Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, Ronald Jackson, while delivering the featured address at the 10th annual general meeting of the St. James Central DEO, says the responsibility was spread across the purview of many actors from Government to private sector to the community, which ranged from issues of physical, social and economic development, to issues of risk communication.

CDEMA Executive Director, Ronald Jackson.

Elaborating on the latter, he noted that this matter received tremendous attention as it relates to warning for the impending event.

“There are those who claimed that the Met Office failed to warn them and others who blamed the national disaster offices, both of whom are key actors in the warning process and who, in any accountability framework, should be among those scrutinised in a forensic look at the issues surrounding warning.

“However key stakeholders absent from this forensic media assessment have been the communities themselves. Generally the findings so far point to the fact that the MET Offices did indicate that there was a trough. In this case they would have lived up to their commitment and provided public notification of the event.

“Some persons would have heard it and not react to it because traditionally a trough meant having some rain but nothing to ‘write home about’. Others would have heard and ignored it because it’s Christmas Eve and they wanted nothing to dampen preparation for the festivities, whilst others would have missed the notification because the disaster offices would not have further amplified this notification given that the existing warning protocols does not address low stationary troughs,” he explained.

He stated that there are a number of questions to be posed to community groups in this analysis including: How did or how should the community respond to this notification? What would have changed if there was a greater awareness of the risk of a trough given the time of year and the current culture of our people? As citizens living in a very hazard prone part of the world we are learning that traditional weather events are resulting in untraditional outcomes. Are we prepared to adjust our traditional responses to effectively deal with the new risk realities we are facing?

“In any event what we are finding out is that the type and level of our community development often times determine the level of risk the community faces and the culture and level of resilience will determine how badly impacted they will be, how quickly they will respond and how fast they will recover,” he stated. (JH)