Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Se­nior Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Co­or­di­na­tor at the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Jer­ry David, is call­ing for for pur­pose con­fig­ured shel­ters rather than com­mu­ni­ty shel­ters to be built for use in emer­gen­cies and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters.

He made that call ahead of what of ex­perts pre­dict could be a tur­bu­lent year for weath­er sys­tems.

In tes­ti­mo­ny be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee ex­am­in­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions in re­spond­ing to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters yes­ter­day, David raised con­cerns about the lack of fit for pur­pose shel­ters and the po­ten­tial risks in us­ing com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres in emer­gen­cies.

“I would go around to the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres that are be­ing built and I’m watch­ing the roofs and I’m watch­ing the eves and how big it is and I’m say­ing good­ness me, this is ice cream for wind, its go­ing to lift it be­cause they not think­ing,” he said.

“I went to a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre, I called it an aquar­i­um, glass all around and I’m say­ing if this is put as a shel­ter then the wind can pick up the big branch and smash it in­to the glass, those things need to change.”

JSC chair­man Sen­a­tor Suni­ty Ma­haraj asked whether the cur­rent struc­tures breached build­ing codes. David re­it­er­at­ed his rec­om­men­da­tion for ad­just­ments to the struc­tures that serve as tem­po­rary refuge for peo­ple dis­placed by dis­as­ters.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from JSC mem­ber Khadi­jah Ameen about the readi­ness of fa­cil­i­ties in times of a cri­sis, David said shel­ters should be built with the spe­cif­ic needs of in­di­vid­u­als in mind.

“These will have hur­ri­cane shut­ters, they will have con­cret­ed roofs like in An­guil­la and An­tigua, they­will have the elec­tri­cal sys­tems placed in a way so that the winds don’t blow down the poles,” he ex­plained.

David said he had pre­vi­ous­ly called for ad­e­quate steps to be tak­en to in­tro­duce fit for pur­pose emer­gency shel­ters.

“I hope that this is a spring­board for the next round of shel­ters that we build,” he said.

Con­cerns about the struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty of the cur­rent ac­com­mo­da­tions have been raised just as heads of re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions brace for in­creased in­ci­dents of flood­ing and land­slides in 2024 as­so­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), Re­tired Ma­jor Gen­er­al Rod­ney Smart, said a ma­jor earth­quake and tsuna­mi are the biggest nat­ur­al dis­as­ter con­cerns at this time.

Smart said risk man­age­ment ef­forts and ini­tia­tives such as the roll-out of a na­tion­al mul­ti haz­ard risk as­sess­ment are card­ed for the new year.

“Its some­thing that has nev­er been done in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­fore but we see the need for that giv­en what is hap­pen­ing in terms of cli­mate change and dis­as­ters and there­fore it is an in­te­grat­ed cli­mate risk and study that we hope to do,” he said.