Raphael John-Lall

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) Gre­go­ry Aboud said there was no ma­jor dam­age ex­pe­ri­enced in Port-of-Spain in the af­ter­math of Tues­day’s earth­quake.

“De­spite the pro­longed du­ra­tion of the event and al­so the in­ten­si­ty of the ac­tu­al earth­quake, we have very few re­ports of any se­ri­ous dam­age to build­ings in and around the down­town Port-of-Spain area, the city cen­tre seems to have es­caped se­ri­ous dam­age. There are one or two ex­cep­tions main­ly the his­toric church­es, where the con­struc­tion was stone and boul­der-type con­struc­tion,” he told Guardian Me­dia by phone yes­ter­day.

There was pan­ic na­tion­wide fol­low­ing Tues­day’s 6.9 mag­ni­tude earth­quake, the biggest to hit T&T in decades.

“Peo­ple are re­port­ing gro­cery prod­ucts falling off shelves, glass bot­tles and or­na­ments dis­played in some re­tail shops, per­fumes, liquor crash­ing to the floor but all in all it is a re­mark­able es­cape for the peo­ple of our coun­try.”

He said that the earth­quake should be read as a very “strong­ly-word­ed” mes­sage to the coun­try that the coun­try has to do more to be pre­pared for ma­jor dis­as­ters in the fu­ture.

“We need more fea­tures in the na­tion­al dis­cus­sions about safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty that in­clude ac­ti­va­tion of emer­gency re­spons­es, the cre­ation of a search and res­cue op­er­a­tion in the coun­try and pos­si­bly to bor­row from the ex­cel­lent work done in the Unit­ed States, which is the cre­ation of a Na­tion­al Guard and vol­un­teers who could be called up at a mo­ment’s no­tice if we do need search and res­cue.”

Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Daphne Bartlett told Guardian Me­dia that there were no re­ports of ma­jor dam­age to busi­ness­es in the south­ern city.

“We thank almighty God for sav­ing us from dev­as­ta­tion and we re­call that Haiti in 2010 had a 7.0 earth­quake and over 300,000 peo­ple died. There were mishaps here and there and noth­ing ma­jor. In San Fer­nan­do and in our mem­ber­ship, no one ex­pe­ri­enced any dam­age to date,” she said.

She al­so said all busi­ness­es on High Street, San Fer­nan­do were op­er­at­ing nor­mal­ly yes­ter­day.

“There was no dam­age ac­tu­al­ly. Oth­er peo­ple ex­pe­ri­enced the af­ter­shock this morn­ing but I did not feel it. It was short.”

She added that in­sur­ance com­pa­nies look at nat­ur­al dis­as­ters as an “Act of God” and warned busi­ness­es and oth­er mem­bers of the pub­lic not to be lulled in­to com­pla­cen­cy as there was no ma­jor dam­age.

“That should be a guide to us as to what we should con­tin­ue be do­ing and not do­ing. Our build­ing codes can with­stand the 7.3 earth­quakes, but that still should not say that we should just sit back and re­lax. We have to change our at­ti­tudes to a lot of things.”

“We want to en­sure that pol­i­cy­hold­ers are ad­e­quate­ly cov­ered in these events and that they know the right pro­ce­dures for ini­ti­at­ing a claim should they have sus­tained any dam­age.”

The As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go In­sur­ance Com­pa­nies (AT­TIC) in re­sponse to queries if in­sur­ance com­pa­nies will car­ry out what is ex­pect­ed of them in the wake of dam­age sus­tained dur­ing Tues­day’s earth­quake stat­ed: “We think that would be tak­en on an in­di­vid­ual ba­sis but our mem­bers are versed in ed­u­cat­ing their pol­i­cy­hold­ers. AT­TIC has 17 mem­bers com­pa­nies. Our first con­cern is our pol­i­cy­hold­ers,” the body said. “We want to en­sure that pol­i­cy­hold­ers are ad­e­quate­ly cov­ered in these events and that they know the right pro­ce­dures for ini­ti­at­ing a claim should they have sus­tained any dam­age.”

“We think that would be tak­en on an in­di­vid­ual ba­sis but our mem­bers are versed in ed­u­cat­ing their pol­i­cy­hold­ers. AT­TIC has 17 mem­bers com­pa­nies. Our first con­cern is our pol­i­cy­hold­ers,” the body said.