I WANT ALL residents of Barbados to think about this.
Last Tuesday, the rain fell intermittently for less than seven hours due to a trough system and torrential showers only fell for a few minutes between 11 a.m. and midday. It should be a huge concern to both residents and the Government that so much damage, displacement and interruption resulted from intermittent showers over a relatively short period.
What if the rain continued until Wednesday morning? What if within those seven hours it was continuous torrential rainfall? Can you imagine what the experience and outcome would have been? Areas that usually flood, flooded, but areas not expected to flood also flooded. This was a warning and hopefully a wake-up call to us all.
I have travelled to a few countries and let me tell you, we better get our act together. Being in Grenada, Haiti, Nigeria and Uganda has opened my eyes to the realities associated with “hard” living, and the discomforts and challenges that arise from the effects of disasters. Barbados has been fortunate over the years not to be severely impacted by any natural or anthropogenic hazards and as a result, I believe we have become complacent and somewhat arrogant.
Barbados is struggling financially to run its affairs. We have a junk credit rating, which makes the situation even worse. If a disaster occurs, it will completely overwhelm the public purse. Look at it this way: if a working father struggles to feed and provide for his daughter, imagine how challenging it would be if that father loses his job and the daughter becomes disabled. Now think about Barbados . . . .
It’s time to wake up and hold our leaders and each other accountable. For example, we as a people must be prudent in our waste disposal (stop the illegal dumping, especially in the gullies); we must keep our drains clear, and also create family disaster plans. I am also appealing to developers to be cognisant that new residential and commercial developments are altering the flow of water, which contribute to the flooding of those “downhill”.
Managing a country can be a very difficult task and periodically there will be need for adjustment of priorities, retrenchment of staff, and cuts in budgets to specific departments. Time will often reveal whether past decisions made were beneficial or detrimental to the country and its people. The impact of “The Tuesday Rains” in my opinion has answered that question with regard to the Government’s decision to cut the resources of the Drainage Unit and the National Environment Enhancement Programme.
There is always a greater cost to pay when you fail to prepare. Due to the poor state of the roads and the numerous potholes, worsened by the floodwaters, many vehicles were badly damaged. This has resulted in high costs to the Government and unfortunately also to vehicle owners.
On Tuesday, an online newspaper carried an article headlined, Region Slow To Adopt Model Disaster Legislation. In it, executive director Ronald Jackson of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), of which Barbados is a participating state, communicated that Barbados was among several Caribbean countries that had failed to adopt the model comprehensive disaster management legislation recommended by CDEMA to better manage hazards. He also said that the absence of firm legislative guidelines to drive the coordinated disaster management effort had given rise to several challenges.
“What we would recognise is that some of the challenges we are facing in terms of the impact of hazards on our respective environments are based solely on a failure to address some of the underlying issues. Whether they are issues related to affordability, development planning issues or social policy-related issues, we realise that a part of dealing with these issues is within the realm of law, some of which are centrally located in the disaster management legislation,” he added.
The issues of disaster management must be dealt with at the government level, community/individual level and as Jackson identified, at the policy level.
In 2013 on Christmas Eve, a trough system severely impacted St Vincent and the Grenadines and St Lucia, resulting in deaths in both countries as well as severe flooding and damage to homes and infrastructure.
The hurricane season is over, but the threat lives on. Wake up!
• Corey Worrell, a former Commonwealth Youth Ambassador, is director of C2J Foundation Inc., a project-based NGO focusing on social development. Email: coreyworrell@gmail.com