IN?VERY?SIMPLE?LANGUAGE, we in Barbados are not ready for any major hurricane. And the Department of Emergency Management’s director Judy Thomas is justifiably concerned.
As she put it, we have not been moving “strategically to get us prepared”, and if the level of damage inflicted on the island by Tropical Storm Tomas may be a guide, it “speaks to our level of vulnerability”.
This is not a matter that we do not need being reminded of.
Minister of Home Affairs Adriel Brathwaite himself has remarked that if there is one thing Tomas taught us it was that “our housing stock is in very poor condition”.
He explained: “If we had 700 claims, I can say to you 200 of them could be repaired, and the others wanted new structures; and that says a lot.”
Indeed it does. It says too many of us are flouting the minimum standards recommended (and that ought to be legally mandated) in building our homes.
Some home builders continue to ignore the advice of having hurricane straps applied to roofs, for example, preferring to rely on luck and the unfounded rumour that God is a Bajan.
The experts have predicted an “average” hurricane year, but weather patterns do change, and it is inadvisable to be so comfy in the season of tempests that we are caught unaware when or if the big one comes.
The common thread in Ms Thomas’ and Mr Brathwaite’s expressed concerns serves as a strong reminder that it takes time, effort and common sense to secure one’s own hurricane plan.
And such preparation is crucial. As we have noted before, most Barbadians could probably recite, by rote, the required contents of a hurricane kit, the island’s hurricane shelters, and how they should secure their homes for tropical-force winds – even how they might anticipate safety for the family pet and food-producing domestic animal.
But this would all come to naught if the most important thing is taken for granted: having actually done our hurricane preparedness in earnest.
We will not stop hurricanes from coming, but we can be so set that we find ourselves in the sturdiest possible place, in the most probable, comfortable circumstance.
As suggested, our collective annual action must go much beyond having a church service at the beginning of the hurricane season. We must escape this comfort zone.
