Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

seigo­nie.mo­hammed@guardian.co.tt

The Caribbean can­not stop hur­ri­canes, floods or earth­quakes, but in­side a Hilton Trinidad con­fer­ence room in Port-of-Spain this week, the con­ver­sa­tion was al­ready on­go­ing about de­cid­ing how pre­pared it is be­fore the next dis­as­ter strikes.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from 13 Dutch and Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean Red Cross Na­tion­al So­ci­eties gath­ered for the in­au­gur­al Caribbean Re­silience Ex­change 2026, not to pre­dict the next dis­as­ter, but to ask a more press­ing ques­tion: Is the re­gion do­ing enough to pre­pare for in­creas­ing­ly com­plex mul­ti-haz­ard emer­gen­cies?

For Ne­cephor Mghen­di, head of Del­e­ga­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Red Cross and Red Cres­cent So­ci­eties (IFRC) Port-of-Spain Coun­try Clus­ter Del­e­ga­tion, the an­swer lies in shift­ing the fo­cus from emer­gency re­sponse to pre­pared­ness.

“Pre­pared­ness is what gets or­gan­i­sa­tions and com­mu­ni­ties to be able to with­stand shocks when they come,” he said. “If you in­vest in pre­pared­ness then you’re able to re­spond be­cause shocks will come, there’s no doubt.”

That pre­pared­ness, he ar­gued, is no longer just about hur­ri­canes.

“We are see­ing that the com­plex­i­ties of emer­gen­cies are in­creas­ing,” Mghen­di said, point­ing to Ja­maica’s ex­pe­ri­ence dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, when com­mu­ni­ties were al­so con­front­ed with an out­break of lep­tospiro­sis.

“You may have wa­ter-borne dis­eases... you may have vec­tor-borne dis­eases,” he said.

“We saw just re­cent­ly in Venezuela a big shock, an earth­quake which can­not be pre­dict­ed. If that were hap­pen­ing in the hur­ri­cane sea­son, it would have a com­pound­ing lay­er.”

The re­al­i­ty of over­lap­ping dis­as­ters was a re­cur­ring theme through­out the three-day ex­change, host­ed by the IFRC in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Risk Man­age­ment (CaDRiM) Ref­er­ence Cen­tre.

Pro­gramme and Op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Rhea Marie Pierre said the event was de­signed less as a con­fer­ence and more as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for Caribbean coun­tries to learn di­rect­ly from each oth­er’s ex­pe­ri­ences.

“We re­al­ly recog­nise the im­por­tance of bring­ing every­one to­geth­er to share our ex­pe­ri­ences,” she said. “As a re­gion, we are in­ter­con­nect­ed, and too of­ten we work sep­a­rate and apart from each oth­er.”

Rather than fill­ing the agen­da with pre­sen­ta­tions, or­gan­is­ers en­cour­aged frank dis­cus­sions about what worked, and what did not dur­ing re­cent dis­as­ters, in­clud­ing Hur­ri­cane Beryl.

“We re­al­ly forced con­ver­sa­tions to hap­pen be­cause that’s what need­ed to hap­pen,” Pierre said.

Yet, at the heart of the Red Cross re­main vol­un­teers, many of whom re­spond to dis­as­ters while cop­ing with loss­es of their own.

“Those peo­ple in the west­ern parish­es were al­so Red Cross vol­un­teers,” Pierre said of Ja­maica’s hur­ri­cane re­sponse. “They, too, are im­pact­ed and they are al­so the ones that are still show­ing up to help.”

For Mghen­di, the true mea­sure of pre­pared­ness is rarely vis­i­ble be­fore dis­as­ter strikes.

“Peo­ple will re­mem­ber the dis­as­ter and how it im­pact­ed them,” he said.

“It’s not what you do in pre­pared­ness that counts; it’s when the dis­as­ter strikes, it helps you to de­liv­er quick­ly... and that’s what re­al­ly counts.”

As cli­mate-re­lat­ed emer­gen­cies be­come more fre­quent and in­creas­ing­ly un­pre­dictable, the chal­lenge fac­ing Caribbean gov­ern­ments and hu­man­i­tar­i­an agen­cies is no longer sim­ply prepar­ing for the next hur­ri­cane.

It is prepar­ing for every­thing that may come with it.