Hav­ing viewed the di­rec­tor of the ODPM's com­ments on tele­vi­sion, I am con­cerned about our abil­i­ty to deal with dis­as­ters. I am not about to cast as­per­sions about any­one's abil­i­ty or char­ac­ter but I must in­di­cate that no amount of po­lit­i­cal cor­rect­ness can ever com­pen­sate for lives that can be lost in nat­ur­al dis­as­ters due to the ab­sence of ap­pro­pri­ate pre­pared­ness. In such light I ask:

• Is there a na­tion­al emer­gency broad­cast sys­tem in place where, in the event of an emer­gency, all ra­dio and tele­vi­sion sta­tions as well as in­stant mes­sag­ing ser­vices will broad­cast the emer­gency with ap­pro­pri­ate warn­ings and an ac­tion plan?

• Are the emer­gency shel­ters clear­ly marked with ap­pro­pri­ate signs and the in­for­ma­tion avail­able to those who may need to ac­cess their use? Are these cen­tres stocked with med­ical sup­plies, blan­kets, mat­tress­es and food­stuff?

• Is there an emer­gency evac­u­a­tion plan with ap­pro­pri­ate signs for the cities, towns and coastal ar­eas?

Un­til these ba­sic things are in place and the in­for­ma­tion ap­pro­pri­ate­ly dis­pensed, all the oth­er press con­fer­ences and ad­ver­tise­ments are old talk that can cost thou­sands of lives to be lost. Once again I plead, please take dis­as­ter man­age­ment se­ri­ous­ly, there are ab­solute­ly no sec­ond chances to do it over or bet­ter.

Steve Al­varez

Via e-mail