Co-Chair of the Technical Standing Committee on Coastal Hazards, Dr. Leo Brewster.
Barbadians are being urged to pay attention to the calls from the Department of Emergency Management (DEM) to get prepared.
The advice has come from Director of the Coastal Zone Management Unit (CZMU) and Co-Chair of the Technical Standing Committee on Coastal Hazards, Dr. Leo Brewster. He was addressing the attendees of a Multi-Hazard Symposium on Earthquakes, Coastal Hazards and Business Continuity Planning yesterday, which was staged by the Ministry of Tourism and International Transport at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.
Brewster while noting that Barbados has been blessed thus far, pointed to the growing intensity and frequency of hurricanes in recent times, and warned that there must be greater urgency in respect of disaster preparedness. With that in mind, he referred to the Common Alerting Protocol app which was launched in late 2017, and urged those present to download it, indicating that that early warning system can keep them up-to-date with what is happening.
“So if you don’t hear it on the radio, you would get the message on your phone. The concern that we have is that this… for the last four or five years on average, you have three systems moving through the Caribbean at one time. In the past it used to be one, maybe two, but you can get three systems back-to-back moving through the Caribbean,” he stated.
Dr. Brewster insisted that while in most cases the systems approaching Barbados usually turn north as they get closer to the island chain, the “law of averages” dictate that at some point in time we are going to experience a hurricane. He is therefore adamant that complacency is not an option. He maintained that persons must have preparedness plans in place and be using them, and therefore they should not be waiting until 24 hours before a system is expected to pass, to be rushing to get supplies from the supermarkets or hardware stores
“You need to be ready from before June because the hurricanes are starting earlier than normal,” he maintained.
In that vein, he also said the days of the old rhyme about the hurricane season “June too soon, July standby, August you must, September remember, October all over” have long passed. The CZMU head made the point while noting that the climatic conditions are indicative of a changing environment and therefore we can expect increased storminess and increased storm intensity going forward. (JRT)