BARBADIANS are “fooling themselves” when it comes to the meaning of disaster, says acting deputy director of the Department of Emergency Management (DEM), Robert Harewood.
Speaking to the DAILY NATION yesterday during an earthquake readiness capacity building workshop at the DEM, Warrens Industrial Park, St Michael, he said disasters by definition were of such magnitude, they usually required outside help.
“A hazard could be dealt with but when it comes to a disaster scenario, you have to call in external assistance. So an earthquake disaster would suggest we really can’t deal with it . . . .
We are not accustomed to such disasters in Barbados,” he said.
Harewood said the impact of the tremors felt in 2007 did not make up a disaster scenario and only “shook up a lot of people.”
“After that, everybody wanted to hear about earthquakes, [but now] you don’t hear anything about them so we need to keep reminding the public it is very possible that we are primed for a major earthquake in the region, either today, tomorrow, next year or in the next ten years,” he said.
Harewood said one thing which annoyed him was that people were now using the term “preparedness” as a means of placing blame.
“Preparedness is a state of mind. It gets me upset when I hear people say, ‘We are not prepared for this and we are not prepared for that’ because you can write plans and test plans, but until you are actually impacted you don’t know how you will deal with it,” he said.
Harewood said plans were guides on how you should act, but it was still up to the individual to be prepared.
“Preparedness is a livity [way of living] – you have to live it. The DEM and other agencies can’t prepare the individual for every contingency. I think we often use the word to push blame on someone else by saying ‘they are not my responsibility’, but preparedness is a livity,” he said. (CA)