Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

De­spite be­ing a trained pro­fes­sion­al in safe­ty, process safe­ty, and emer­gency re­sponse, Trinida­di­an char­tered en­gi­neer Wayne Mo­han—who sur­vived Colom­bia’s dead­ly earth­quake—is urg­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go au­thor­i­ties and fam­i­lies to strength­en their pre­pared­ness for a ma­jor seis­mic event.

Mo­han said the dev­as­ta­tion in Colom­bia and Venezuela should serve as a wake-up call for Trinidad and To­ba­go to ex­am­ine its own readi­ness. He not­ed that this coun­try lies with­in an ac­tive seis­mic zone and stressed that pre­pared­ness can­not rest sole­ly with the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM).

“A ma­jor earth­quake could test our en­tire emer­gency re­sponse sys­tem—fire and res­cue, hos­pi­tals, po­lice, the De­fence Force, util­i­ties, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, roads, mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions, and com­mu­ni­ties,” Mo­han said. “Are our homes, schools, hos­pi­tals, util­i­ties, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems, roads, and crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture ca­pa­ble of func­tion­ing af­ter se­vere ground shak­ing?”

He em­pha­sized that fam­i­lies must al­so play their part by de­vel­op­ing emer­gency plans and stock­ing es­sen­tial sup­plies such as wa­ter, food, med­ica­tion, flash­lights, bat­tery-pow­ered ra­dios, and first-aid kits. Mo­han ad­vised se­cur­ing heavy fur­ni­ture and gas cylin­ders and en­sur­ing build­ings com­ply with prop­er con­struc­tion codes.

“Dur­ing those mo­ments, there is no class­room, no pre­sen­ta­tion, no time to be­gin de­vel­op­ing an emer­gency plan. You act based on what you al­ready know and what you have al­ready pre­pared for,” he ex­plained.

Mo­han high­light­ed the im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ty sup­port, re­call­ing how neigh­bours in Colom­bia helped one an­oth­er amid fear and un­cer­tain­ty. “We can­not pre­dict when the next earth­quake will oc­cur or its mag­ni­tude, but we can de­cide how pre­pared we will be when the ground be­gins to move,” he said.

He al­so not­ed that mem­bers of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s com­mu­ni­ty have been as­sist­ing vic­tims of the Colom­bian dis­as­ter with food, gro­ceries, and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sup­plies. Do­na­tions came from Boodoo’s Elec­tri­cal, the As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al En­gi­neers of Trinidad and To­ba­go (APETT) led by pres­i­dent Ian Cox, mem­bers of the IChemE Trinidad and To­ba­go Mem­ber Group—in­clud­ing Shan­tal Ramdeo and As­tor Har­ris—as well as cit­i­zens and church­es.

Mo­han, who lives in Colom­bia with his wife and daugh­ter, was in Tu­luá when the mag­ni­tude 7.4 earth­quake struck while they were asleep. By Au­gust 12, au­thor­i­ties re­port­ed 265 con­firmed deaths, near­ly 500 peo­ple miss­ing, more than 3,770 in­jured, and over 9,550 homes de­stroyed.

A Process Safe­ty Fel­low of the In­sti­tu­tion of Chem­i­cal En­gi­neers (IChemE) and a Char­tered En­gi­neer with more than 30 years’ ex­pe­ri­ence in the petro­chem­i­cal and pe­tro­le­um in­dus­tries, Mo­han said Trinidad and To­ba­go must be­gin plan­ning now to en­sure its peo­ple and in­fra­struc­ture are ready for the in­evitable.