ARE WE really ready? Does Barbados have an adequate mechanism in place to deal with a major earthquake? And perhaps even more importantly, are we really ready for a mass evacuation of people from low-lying coastal areas in the face of an advancing tsunami triggered by a quake?
While the last thing we want to do is to appear alarmist, the rattling of our sense of national security twice yesterday as a result of earthquakes off Barbados makes these questions most relevant.
The first quake, which was felt just before sunrise was measured at 5.3 magnitude and was recorded at a depth of 13 kilometres. And according to the US Geological Survey, the second quake occurred 132 kilometres north east of Barbados ten kilometres deep and measured 6.4 on the Richter scale.
While there were no reports of injuries or damage we have seen quakes of similar magnitude in other places result in tremendous loss of life and billions of dollars in damage to property. We should all be thankful therefore they occurred so far offshore.
But what if accompanying the tremor there was a threat of a tsunami? In and around Bridgetown many employees quickly abandoned their places of work and assembled in places like Hero Square and Jubilee Gardens: how would these people have been warned if their was a need for further evacuation? After all, the emergency planners’ own predictions have been that Bridgetown as far inland as Belmont Road is particularly vulnerable to major tidal surges.
Our capacity to evacuate the City has never been truly tested. Yes, on July 2, 2008 the police along with other emergency services staged a simulated afternoon evacuation that only occurred after public notices over several days. Back then they cleared Bridgetown of vehicular traffic in three hours, which in any event was one hour longer than they had said they would have taken to do it exactly one year earlier.
Yesterday’s late morning quake and any resulting tsunami would not have come with such a luxury.
In fact, we recall that during the 2008 exercise scores of people were standing at bus stops totally oblivious to the traffic changes, including the rerouting of public transport, which only meant they were waiting in vain. Whatever its successes or faults,nno attempt has been made to test it since then.
Our aim is not to knock the exercise that occurred six years ago, or even to pillory the Department of Emergency Management over anything that occurred or did not occur yesterday, since in the final analysis there was no need for an evacuation of the City and other vulnerable coastal areas.
Instead, our desire is to raise the level of consciousness among our emergency planners, first responders, the business community and members of the public generally of the fact that we need to get our procedures fine-tuned and known to all. We cannot wait for a tragedy to act.
Two tremors in one day, we believe, ought to be warning enough – and the presence of the very active Kick ’em Jenny undersea volcano at our backdoor should serve as a serious reminder of the potential peril we face each day living in an island nation where the vast majority of the inhabitants reside within a kilometre of the coastline.
From Checker Hall in St Lucy along the West and South coasts to Long Beach in Christ Church residents and those who work in these areas need to know that they should always have a plan for getting to the safety of a higher elevation within minutes.
It’s just a fact of life in this part of the tropics. It also time for our emergency planners to have a conversation with the people they are charged with protecting.
