Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), Ma­jor Gen­er­al (Ret’d) Rod­ney Smart, has chal­lenged dis­as­ter man­age­ment stake­hold­ers to up­grade their re­spec­tive agen­cies’ emer­gency plans, stan­dard op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dures and prac­tices, ahead of the im­pend­ing Wet/Hur­ri­cane Sea­son.

The ODPM CEO chaired a strat­e­gy plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion work­shop for the up­com­ing Wet/Hur­ri­cane Sea­son, with key na­tion­al dis­as­ter man­age­ment agen­cies on Thurs­day 14th May 2020.

The in­ter­ac­tive train­ing ses­sion, which blend­ed on­line and live par­tic­i­pants at the Na­tion­al Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NEOC) in Tacarigua, fo­cused on a Whole-of-So­ci­ety ap­proach to im­prov­ing na­tion­al dis­as­ter readi­ness and re­sponse.

A re­lease from the ODPM notes that the dis­cus­sions were shaped and in­formed by the ad­vi­so­ry is­sued by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vices (TTMS) ear­li­er this week, that the coun­try should ex­pect an above-nor­mal Wet/Hur­ri­cane Sea­son. This sea­son of­fi­cial­ly com­mences on June 1, 2020 and lasts for six months un­til No­vem­ber 30, 2020.

The ODPM points out that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic have made this year’s prepa­ra­tions par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing. Dur­ing the ses­sion, par­tic­i­pants were pre­sent­ed with var­i­ous sce­nar­ios that were ini­ti­at­ed by a dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­cane im­pact­ing both is­lands and caus­ing wide­spread dam­age, against the back­drop of the pan­dem­ic.

The re­lease re­ports that par­tic­i­pants were re­quired to present their re­spec­tive or­gan­i­sa­tions’ pre, dur­ing and post im­pact prepa­ra­tion and re­sponse ac­tions to the var­i­ous ac­com­pa­ny­ing haz­ards such as tor­ren­tial rain­fall, storm surges, coastal ero­sion, land­slides, flood­ing and pow­er out­ages. Through­out the process, peers crit­i­cal­ly and cre­ative­ly analysed each oth­er’s plans lead­ing in the end, to a more in­te­grat­ed and syn­er­gis­tic ap­proach to dis­as­ter man­age­ment at the na­tion­al lev­el.

At­tend­ing the work­shop were rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the De­fence Force; Po­lice Ser­vice; Fire Ser­vice; Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Units of the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment; To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency, Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vices; and the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency.