Kali­fa Clyne

The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) will meet with the Min­istry of Trans­port and sev­er­al state agen­cies to dis­cuss an evac­u­a­tion plan for the Uri­ah But­ler High­way. Ac­cord­ing to chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of ODPM Stephen Ram­roop, with­in the next two months the ODPM would in­clude ma­jor in­ci­dents on the na­tion's high­ways such as the sit­u­a­tion on Mon­day in which a truck knocked down a T&TEC pole on the Uri­ah But­ler High­way, near Grand Bazaar. That in­ci­dent caused a ma­jor grid­lock from Grand Bazaar to Cou­va on the north­bound lane of the high­way.

He al­so re­ferred to a sim­i­lar traf­fic prob­lem in Ch­aguara­mas dur­ing the Red­bull Flug­tag event in Ju­ly this year. He said the ODPM had recog­nised sit­u­a­tions where traf­fic was shut down be­cause of a ma­jor in­ci­dent as a re­cur­ring prob­lem and the need for prop­er co-or­di­nat­ing and har­mon­is­ing of al­ter­nate routes and evac­u­a­tion plans were nec­es­sary. Ram­roop was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from re­porters yes­ter­day dur­ing a news con­fer­ence held at the ODPM's Tacarigua of­fice to dis­cuss the 6th Caribbean Con­fer­ence on Com­pre­hen­sive Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment.

The con­fer­ence is sched­uled to take place in T&T at the Hy­att Re­gency from De­cem­ber 5 to De­cem­ber 9. Deputy ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA) Eliz­a­beth Ri­ley said the con­fer­ence would as­sist in chart­ing the way for­ward in terms of com­pre­hen­sive dis­as­ter man­age­ment. The week-long con­fer­ence, themed "CDM: Re­flec­tion, In­tro­spec­tion and Mov­ing For­ward, would in­clude work­shops, a pub­lic ex­hi­bi­tion and youth ses­sions.