OVER THE PAST TEN TO 20 YEARS Barbados has not been moving “strategically to get us prepared” for the worst hurricane, says director of the Department of Emergency Management, Judy Thomas.
Speaking on the call-in show Brass Tacks on Voice of Barbados 92.9FM yesterday, Thomas said Tropical Storm Tomas was a minimal storm and it never should have inflicted the level of damage to the island that it did.
“That speaks to our level of vulnerability and our housing sector, particularly for the poor and the indigent, who cannot afford to do the repairs. There ought to be somewhere in the Ministry of Housing a policy or an incentive to address that particular problem,” she said.
While lamenting that “emergency services are not fully mainstreamed into the Civil Service capacity, the private sector capacity or even the individual person”, she suggested that some progress was being made.
