I would like to thank who­ev­er wrote the Guardian ed­i­to­r­i­al on Tues­day, April 30.One of our key chal­lenges at the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) is to co-or­di­nate and in­te­grate all sec­tors in­volved in flood man­age­ment–now a glob­al threat. A na­tion­al flood pol­i­cy is need­ed. To this end, the ODPM has em­barked on a num­ber of pro­grammes aimed at sen­si­tis­ing at-risk com­mu­ni­ties as well as en­gag­ing rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers.

An in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee on Flood Re­sponse was formed since 2010 and rec­om­men­da­tions were made by this com­mit­tee to ex­pand the scope and man­date to com­pre­hen­sive dis­as­ter man­age­ment (CDE­MA/Cari­com, 2004). The ODPM is an­tic­i­pat­ing that the rec­om­men­da­tions of the com­mit­tee would be im­ple­ment­ed as soon as pos­si­ble.

You are quite cor­rect as one of our ma­jor find­ings in Dis­as­ter Risk Man­age­ment Sci­en­tif­ic Lit­er­a­ture is that com­mu­ni­ties pose a sig­nif­i­cant threat to them­selves. In a world where dwin­dling re­sources make gov­ern­ments pri­ori­tise their ex­pen­di­ture on val­ue-added gains, we can see why dis­as­ter man­age­ment is low down on the ta­ble.

The ODPM team feels flood­ing needs to be in­clud­ed as part of an all-haz­ard ap­proach to dis­as­ter risk man­age­ment–the Com­pre­hen­sive Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment (CDM) main­stream­ing pro­gramme (CDE­MA/Cari­com, 2004).

We must have a na­tion­al flood pol­i­cy so that even risk trans­fer mech­a­nisms are em­bed­ded in the pol­i­cy and will there­fore cater for our com­mu­ni­ties, lives, prop­er­ty and liveli­hoods. We just can­not pre­vent some haz­ard im­pacts but we can sure­ly mit­i­gate the sever­i­ty of the im­pact. We can iden­ti­fy our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and work to re­move or re­duce them. We, there­fore, must un­der­stand the risk-based ap­proach to dis­as­ter man­age­ment. Man­age­ment of da­ta and knowl­edge is al­so high in pri­or­i­ty at ODPM.

At present the ODPM has re­quest­ed the num­ber of me­tres of drainage per mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty and num­ber of me­tres of drainage per risk area iden­ti­fied on our cur­rent haz­ard maps (flood and land­slide). The ODPM is cur­rent­ly in­volved in a UNDP and IADB project to achieve coun­try­wide map­ping of com­mon haz­ards.

The per­cent­age of drainage main­tained by rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties per risk area iden­ti­fied is be­low tar­gets even if the da­ta col­lect­ed from the MoLG Mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties are present­ly crude and not ac­cu­rate. When we make a state­ment it must be ev­i­dence-based as much as pos­si­ble.

As you can well imag­ine the fac­tors that af­fect this met­ric are nu­mer­ous and in­clude so­cio-eco­nom­ic, com­mu­ni­ty-based fac­tors such as lit­ter­ing, garbage dis­pos­al and col­lec­tion, rel­e­vant leg­is­la­tion and reg­u­la­tions that guide en­force­ment, eg, bev­er­age con­tain­er bill, EMA, spa­tial de­vel­op­ment plan, na­tion­al build­ing codes, and cul­tur­al and po­lit­i­cal is­sues.

As we ap­proach our tasks in the fight to achieve ro­bust pub­lic safe­ty and civ­il de­fence mech­a­nisms we must keep in mind that risks oc­cur every sec­ond of our lives. We can­not ever hope to re­move risks from our lives and leg­is­la­tion does not pro­vide the on­ly an­swer.

We must build a cul­ture of re­silience. We will use all av­enues, pro­grammes, ef­forts and lob­by­ing to re­duce some risks but we must be con­stant­ly cog­nisant of the fact that the world has changed from ten, five and even two years ago.

Ur­ban pop­u­la­tion has grown, tech­nol­o­gy has im­proved, new build­ings have been con­struct­ed in our cities that place more bur­den on old and ex­ist­ing pub­lic safe­ty and health sys­tems such as air qual­i­ty, sew­er­age dis­pos­al, garbage and refuse man­age­ment, wa­ter us­age, traf­fic and park­ing ca­pac­i­ty, egress and evac­u­a­tion routes, health­care ca­pac­i­ty, food and nu­tri­tion re­quire­ments and recre­ation and re­lax­ation venues and events.

With rapid­ly in­creas­ing de­vel­op­ment comes a price. We can­not ever hope to have the things that we felt com­fort­able with in the past in our cities and our res­i­den­tial ar­eas now. Life has changed and the soon­er we un­der­stand that, the bet­ter.

Garbage: With­in a mat­ter of min­utes, all the plas­tic cups and garbage that are thrown in the streets at lunchtime will col­lect with the first rush of wa­ter in a heavy down­pour and form the first block to our free wa­ter flow in the small­er chan­nels. Roads now be­come rivers. Where is all the wa­ter from our sky­scrap­ers go­ing from the thou­sands of faucets that are used dai­ly? How many garbage bins can you count on any one street in a ma­jor city in T&T?

Cars: Can we rea­son­ably ex­pect that the num­ber of cars in­to the city are go­ing to de­crease in the next ten years?

Cul­ture and knowl­edge: If a storm is ap­proach­ing Trinidad, do you think that this will be hours or min­utes or sec­onds be­fore the ef­fects of the on­com­ing storm is felt? If I re­quest of the po­lice and traf­fic of­fi­cers that they must block all en­trances in­to the city from north, west, south and east im­me­di­ate­ly and that all peo­ple wish­ing to come to the city find rel­a­tives in rur­al ar­eas un­til we give the all-clear to re­turn, how do you think the mes­sage will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to these peo­ple by the of­fi­cers?

How will peo­ple so af­fect­ed re­act on the scene with the of­fi­cers? How will the of­fi­cers do the ac­tu­al block–will they just block the road or find a suit­able place with more space to ma­noeu­vre?If I re­quest that all peo­ple in the city head out of the city us­ing the ex­it lanes of the ex­ist­ing routes but all ve­hi­cles ex­it through East­ern Main Road on­ly and on­ly emer­gency ve­hi­cles en­ter Port-of-Spain via the Bus Route; that the La­dy Young Road shall on­ly be one-way out...how will the dri­ving pop­u­la­tion re­act?

If I say that all peo­ple who are in PoS must leave their ve­hi­cles and walk to­wards the Sa­van­nah im­me­di­ate­ly, how many peo­ple will use their ve­hi­cles to pick up their chil­dren first? How many peo­ple will get locked in traf­fic out of the city?

To be "ready" for a dis­as­ter im­pact, the coun­try has on­ly to look back at the 1990 Coup, the re­cent black­out and the events in Boston and Texas, USA. In or­der for us to be ready, when the au­thor­i­ties change the ex­ist­ing plans, the peo­ple must re­spond. If the au­thor­i­ties re­quest that peo­ple, in­clud­ing elect­ed of­fi­cials, stay at home un­til oth­er­wise ad­vised, our pop­u­la­tion must be ready to do so. This is an es­sen­tial part of readi­ness.

Are we ready? No, as a pop­u­la­tion we are not. An evac­u­a­tion plan ex­ists for the city. On March 20, 2013, the evac­u­a­tion of a school was test­ed to mea­sure the times and de­ter­mine the av­er­age time need­ed for this process for schools in Port-of-Spain. Many for­eign mis­sions have al­so ex­e­cut­ed evac­u­a­tion pro­ce­dures.The time tak­en to get to the na­tion­al com­mand cen­tre was mea­sured for all key re­spond­ing agen­cies. The city fire head­quar­ters ex­e­cut­ed a drill to evac­u­ate in case of an on­com­ing tsuna­mi.

Each cell in a hu­man be­ing pos­sess­es a high de­gree of re­silien­cy that when in­te­grat­ed to the or­gans and to the en­tire hu­man be­ing, al­lows for a high­ly de­vel­oped or­gan­ism that pos­sess­es the re­mark­able abil­i­ty for "flight or fight" in or­der to pro­tect it­self.

Each in­di­vid­ual and com­mu­ni­ty must be like the cells and or­gans of a hu­man be­ing. Each in­di­vid­ual and com­mu­ni­ty must pos­sess the abil­i­ty to pro­tect it­self. The au­thor­i­ties must pro­vide the le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry, so­cioe­co­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal cush­ion that al­lows for a high­ly ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive pub­lic safe­ty net lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and glob­al­ly.The Gov­ern­ment must pro­vide prop­er drainage and garbage col­lec­tion sys­tems, in keep­ing with de­vel­op­ment for its peo­ple.

The peo­ple must keep their drains clean, stop set­ting fire to the hills, abide by the lit­ter and EMA reg­u­la­tions, learn about the haz­ards that they are ex­posed to, take ap­pro­pri­ate steps to mit­i­gate the im­pact of dis­as­ters of all types, plan ahead and co-op­er­ate with the au­thor­i­ties in or­der to be bet­ter ready for com­mon haz­ards like floods, land­slides and heavy winds, and for un­com­mon haz­ards such as earth­quakes, tsunamis and ter­ror­ist and in­dus­tri­al in­ci­dents.

These are not re­ac­tive pro­grammes, they are con­tin­u­ous and need to be adapt­ed as the need aris­es, as we aim for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of our na­tion.

DR STEPHEN RAM­ROOP

CEO, ODPM