To­ba­go’s Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency is work­ing to re­stock re­sources used dur­ing the Feb­ru­ary oil spill dis­as­ter in prepa­ra­tion for the up­com­ing hur­ri­cane sea­son, ac­cord­ing to agency di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art.

The 2024 hur­ri­cane sea­son be­gins on June 1 and ends on No­vem­ber 30.

The T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice has al­ready pre­dict­ed an above av­er­age sea­son.

Speak­ing on Wednes­day, Stew­art said TEMA is fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing a cul­ture of re­silience across the is­land.

“We are prepar­ing the pop­u­la­tion, we are ask­ing all the sec­tors to be ready to do what they can so that they make them­selves hard tar­gets dur­ing this sea­son,” he added.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has car­ried out drainage works to re­duce the risk of se­vere flood­ing and iden­ti­fied build­ings with com­pro­mised foun­da­tions that could pose a threat. Stew­art al­so con­firmed that all emer­gency shel­ters are equipped and ready for use.

While of­fi­cials on the is­land had to utilise re­sources to re­spond to the Feb­ru­ary 7 oil spill, Stew­art as­sured that this will not pose a chal­lenge as the agency re­stocks in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the hur­ri­cane sea­son.

“And now we are in the process of re­stock­ing those ar­eas to en­sure that in the event of a ma­jor in­ci­dent, we are able to re­spond ad­e­quate­ly,” he said.

Stew­art called on stake­hold­ers to con­tribute re­sources as TEMA con­tin­ues to pre­pare the is­land for the up­com­ing hur­ri­cane sea­son.

“We have been go­ing to the malls and reach­ing peo­ple on the streets and go­ing to the schools to teach peo­ple about dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness. Based on the pro­jec­tions by Met (T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Of­fice) this year promis­es to be ac­tive. But it just needs one to throw us off,” he said.

Mean­while, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, dur­ing a press con­fer­ence last week, said the is­land is still reel­ing from the ef­fects of in­clement weath­er two years ago.

He said, “The THA through TEMA, we are in fact ready and pre­pared for the up­com­ing hur­ri­cane sea­son. We do an­tic­i­pate sig­nif­i­cant vol­umes of rain­fall and we know that will have im­pact to floods land­slides dam­age to homes and pri­vate prop­er­ties. We have not even re­solved some of the is­sues from the ex­treme rain­fall ac­tiv­i­ties from the end of 2022. We are prepar­ing even with that in mind.”