Yvonne Ba­boolal

If a tsuna­mi is head­ing to­wards Port-of-Spain, bus­es will take peo­ple from the cap­i­tal city to places like the La­dy Young look­out or the North­ern?Range which are more than 30 to 40 feet high, says the CEO?of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter?Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), Dr Stephen?Ram­roop. "There is a plan, and the ODPM will co-or­di­nate the en­tire event," Ram­roop as­sured. The De­fence?Force, the po­lice, the Fire Ser­vice and min­istries like Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Trans­port will al­so be in­volved in the process, he said. Out­lin­ing the ba­sic points of the plan, he said if there is rea­son­able time to "egress" (and es­cape the tsuna­mi), peo­ple in the city will be asked to as­sem­ble at evac­u­a­tion hubs. From these north-east, north-west and south-east hubs, bus­es and oth­er forms of state trans­porta­tion will take peo­ple to the hills,?Ram­roop dis­closed. "They will be tak­en to places like the La­dy Young look­out and the North­ern?Range," he said. Ram­roop said a gen­er­al evac­u­a­tion for Port-of-Spain, in the event of a ma­jor dis­as­ter, is al­so well in place. "The ODPM as­sist­ed the Port-of-Spain?Cor­po­ra­tion in the de­vel­op­ment of an egress plan and an evac­u­a­tion plan," he said. "The egress plan in­volves leav­ing the city in an or­der­ly fash­ion with­out any im­me­di­ate haz­ardous ef­fects.

"The evac­u­a­tion plan is about leav­ing your cars, every­thing, and walk­ing to points where you will be tak­en away to places of safe­ty."

Ram­roop said all key stake­hold­ers, like the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion were in­volved in putting to­geth­er the evac­u­a­tion plan. He not­ed it was a dy­nam­ic work in progress and did not re­quire fi­nal ap­proval from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion or any oth­er agency. "Ac­cord­ing to the law, all evac­u­a­tion plans for the city must be sub­mit­ted to the Port-of-Spain?Cor­po­ra­tion." He said there was a re­view date for the plan to look at pos­si­ble short­com­ings and suc­cess­es. Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing, speak­ing in a very low tone, said he had no com­ments to make. Diego Mar­tin North/East MP Colm Im­bert said as far as he knew, an evac­u­a­tion plan for Port-of-Spain ex­ist­ed and it was a good one. "An evac­u­a­tion plan was de­vel­oped by Roger Is­rael (deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Works) sev­er­al years ago," he said. "A plan ex­ists to move peo­ple out of Port-of-Spain as quick­ly as pos­si­ble with the least amount of trou­ble, and it looks good to me."

Im­bert said maybe the time had come to do an evac­u­a­tion drill for the city but warned: "This is not some­thing to be jump­ing to do willy-nil­ly. "It could cause so much dis­rup­tion if it is not done prop­er­ly." Com­ment­ing on the col­lapsed road at Sea Lots on Wednes­day, he said he did not think the au­thor­i­ties moved quick­ly enough to deal with the sit­u­a­tion. Al­so not­ing that "the hole just ap­peared out of the blue," he said what was need­ed was a plan to di­vert traf­fic in an or­der­ly fash­ion. On sec­ond thoughts, he added, maybe the au­thor­i­ties did the best they could do, since they had no op­tions. "The Beetham High­way car­ries 70 per cent of the ve­hic­u­lar load from the south and the east. "Where could you di­vert to? The La­dy Young Road and the East­ern Main?Road are in­ca­pable of car­ry­ing such load."