The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) met with key stake­hold­ers ear­li­er this week, as part of its plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion for the up­com­ing Wet / Hur­ri­cane Sea­son, sched­uled to be­gin on 1 June 2020.

A re­lease from the ODPM re­ports that plan­ning dis­cus­sions at this week’s meet­ing al­so fac­tored in the cur­rent glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and in par­tic­u­lar, the im­pact it was hav­ing on Trinidad and To­ba­go, and how that could af­fect the ODPM’s op­er­a­tions.

One key area of agree­ment by all stake­hold­ers and the ODPM team, is that cit­i­zens should view the cur­rent stay-at-home pro­to­col as an op­por­tune time to pre­pare for the up­com­ing hur­ri­cane sea­son.

The full text of the ODPM state­ment, fol­lows…

ODPM AND KEY STAKE­HOLD­ERS PLAN FOR THE UP­COM­ING WET/HUR­RI­CANE SEA­SON IN THE COVID-19 CON­TEXT

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Wet/Hur­ri­cane Sea­son be­gins on June 1st, 2020, and al­ready, the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) along with some of its crit­i­cal stake­hold­er agen­cies, which are in­volved in re­lief and re­cov­ery op­er­a­tions have be­gun prepar­ing for it. In this re­gard, on Wednes­day 29th April 2020 the ODPM held an ini­tial strat­e­gy plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion ses­sion at the Na­tion­al Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NEOC).

This year’s up­com­ing Hur­ri­cane Sea­son has been pre­dict­ed to be an above-nor­mal one and mixed in with the pres­ence of COVID-19, the ODPM recog­nis­es that there is a dire need for Trinidad and To­ba­go to be in an even stronger state of readi­ness than pre­vi­ous­ly.

The COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic is im­pact­ing many na­tions across the globe, and a par­a­digm shift has oc­curred in the man­ner in which peo­ple in­ter­act dai­ly. For ex­am­ple, one such shift is the re­quire­ment for so­cial dis­tanc­ing. This con­sid­er­a­tion, along with the po­ten­tial im­pacts of ad­verse weath­er con­di­tions, will un­doubt­ed­ly pose a chal­lenge for re­sponse and sup­port agen­cies in 2020.

At the meet­ing, stake­hold­ers were pre­sent­ed with a hur­ri­cane im­pact sce­nario that re­quired crit­i­cal and cre­ative think­ing around the com­plex­i­ties posed by the COVID-19 en­vi­ron­ment.

Some of the key ar­eas dis­cussed were:

*  Dis­as­ter re­lief and re­cov­ery op­er­a­tions

*  Evac­u­a­tion op­er­a­tions and pro­to­cols

*  Search and res­cue op­er­a­tions

*  Shel­ter man­age­ment ob­serv­ing phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing re­quire­ments

*  Med­ical sup­port and iso­la­tion re­quire­ments

*  Hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance and re­lief dis­tri­b­u­tion

The CEO of the ODPM, Ma­jor Gen­er­al (Ret’d) Rod­ney Smart chaired the in­ter­ac­tive ses­sion.

Al­so in at­ten­dance were Mr. Jer­ry David and Ms. Haze-Ann Cum­mings of the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal De­vel­op­ment; Ms Pat­ti-Ann Williams of the Min­istry of Health; Mr Troy Pol­lon­ais and Ms Dei­dra Samp­son of the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Mr. Stephan Kishore of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Cross So­ci­ety, along with Mr Navin­dra Per­sad and Mr Er­ic Mack­ie of the ODPM.

Stake­hold­ers hav­ing grap­pled with the chal­lenges of dis­as­ter man­age­ment along­side the COVID-19 ex­pe­ri­ence, will now re­vise their Agen­cies’ emer­gency plans and pro­ce­dures, which will now feed in­to the Na­tion­al Re­sponse Plan.

The meet­ing al­so re­it­er­at­ed the need for cit­i­zens, while con­tend­ing with the pan­dem­ic, to utilise the time at home to be­gin per­son­al prepa­ra­tions for the up­com­ing Wet/Hur­ri­cane Sea­son, as well as the oth­er haz­ards that may be­fall us. Notwith­stand­ing the na­tion’s cur­rent and po­ten­tial chal­lenges, to­geth­er as a na­tion, we can re­duce the spread of COVID-19 and min­imise the im­pact of ad­verse weath­er and oth­er haz­ards on our so­ci­ety.