“Hope for the best but pre­pare for the worst!”

These were the words of the CEO of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), Ma­jor Gen­er­al (Re­tired) Rod­ney Smart, as the agency con­tin­ues to en­cour­age All of So­ci­ety pre­pared­ness, for the clos­ing weeks of the 2021 Hur­ri­cane and Wet Sea­sons.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued by the ODPM, the CEO was com­ment­ing on the cur­rent Post-Dis­as­ter Needs As­sess­ment (PDNA) train­ing and sim­u­la­tion ex­er­cise, which the ODPM is host­ing for key sec­tors in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The PDNA is an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­cept­ed method­ol­o­gy that aims to en­hance the coun­try’s ca­pac­i­ty to thor­ough­ly un­der­stand ef­fects, dam­ages, and loss­es, as well as to ad­e­quate­ly pri­ori­tise re­sources for re­cov­ery and re­con­struc­tion, af­ter a na­tion­al dis­as­ter event.

The “Ad­vanc­ing the Pre­pared­ness for Re­cov­ery Pro­gramme in Trinidad and To­ba­go” ini­tia­tive is be­ing un­der­tak­en with the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, through a tri­par­tite agree­ment be­tween the Unit­ed Na­tions, the World Bank Group and the Eu­ro­pean Union.

The ODPM said the ex­er­cise, which is be­ing led by Dr Asha Kam­bon as the lead fa­cil­i­ta­tor, is us­ing as its back­drop, the se­vere weath­er event of Oc­to­ber 2018, when sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in­clu­sive of Green­vale, San­gre Grande, St He­le­na, Kel­ly Vil­lage, Pe­nal, Debe, Diego Mar­tin, and Bar­rack­pore were flood­ed. Ex­er­cise par­tic­i­pants are us­ing the post-flood da­ta and in­for­ma­tion to as­cer­tain the to­tal dam­age and loss­es that oc­curred with­in the com­pos­ite pro­duc­tive, so­cial and in­fra­struc­ture sec­tors.

The ODPM said the sec­ond out­put of this ex­er­cise is the de­vel­op­ment of a com­pre­hen­sive, na­tion­al data­base of crit­i­cal as­sets and ca­pa­bil­i­ties, util­is­ing the da­ta and in­for­ma­tion col­lect­ed from this sim­u­la­tion, as well as cur­rent and his­tor­i­cal events and im­pacts. Should a na­tion­al dis­as­ter oc­cur at any point in the near fu­ture, T&T will pos­sess a cur­rent data­base up­on which an ef­fec­tive as­sess­ment of dam­age and loss can be un­der­tak­en, which will as­sist in build­ing back bet­ter and faster.

The ODPM added sev­er­al min­istries and agen­cies crit­i­cal to the re­cov­ery ef­fort, al­so took part in the ex­er­cis­es in­clud­ing the Min­istries of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty; Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment; Works and Trans­port; Fi­nance; En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries; Health; Pub­lic Util­i­ties; So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices; Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment; Di­vi­sions of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, in­clud­ing the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) and the UNDP.