In the event of a major tsunami, those in the Holetown community are now well equipped to get residents to safety.
With the sound of the alarm bell and a mobile alert at 10:11 a.m. the students and teachers of the St James Primary School made a uniformed dash for higher ground at a nearby assembly spot in Morgan’s Hill just above their school as part of the Caribe Ware evacuation exercise.
The Caribe Wave exercise was based on a 8.3 magnitude earthquake off the South East Coast of Barbados which triggered tsunami waves of 30.6 metres in some areas.
Approximately 191 students were evacuated and taken uphill, under the supervision of their teachers and emergency officials from the Department of Emergency Management, the Roving Response Team, fire officials, among many other, in an effort to “escape the tsunami waves”.
After the all-clear was given at 11:47 a.m. students returned to school in an orderly fashion accompanied by their teachers.
Yesterday’s activity also coincided with Holetown becoming the first community in Barbados to receive the UNESCO internationally approved Tsunami Ready Certificate of Recognition.
Programme oficer at the DEM Danielle Skeete told the Weekend Nation the exercise was a success and the students did it in record time.
“I would think that generally the exercise was a success all of the children and staff were accounted for here at our holding point. It took approximately four minutes for the first group of children to reach this area which we think was very well done. We usually would give people a period of about 15 minutes to get there so it was very well executed,” she said.
Skeete said the exercise was done to test protocols and familiarize the students with the proper procedure in the event of a real emergency. She said following the exercise, a debriefing would be done to see what areas they needed to improve on.
“This tsunami exercise tests our protocols, it tests communication and any evacuation plans that school has in place to see how well they are. It also gives us an idea of any gaps, so after the exercise we will do a debriefing. We have observers, we had evaluators, and they would give us feedback on what they saw and what they think can be done better. We are sure they are going to be some gaps and we are going to discuss those later and see how best we can rectify those,” she added.
Skeete also noted that provisions were also made for the students of the nearby Frederick Smith Secondary School who were absent because of the Barbados Secondary Schools Athletics Championships (BSSAC).
Also participating in the exercise were Scotiabank, the Holetown Police Station and Mango Bay hotel. (DB)
