Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) CEO, Ma­jor Gen­er­al Rodney Smart, says gov­ern­ment agen­cies in­volved in dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness need more re­sources.

Smart, who spoke to re­porters at the start of a two-day na­tion­al sim­u­la­tion ex­er­cise ahead of the T20 World Cup yes­ter­day, said there was a need for ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.

“It starts with agen­cies such as the Fire Ser­vice, the De­fence Force and the Po­lice Ser­vice, all the agen­cies that are go­ing to re­spond in the event of an emer­gency,” he ex­plained.

“While we train in the hope that noth­ing hap­pens, we must have the ca­pac­i­ty and the ca­pa­bil­i­ties to be able to re­spond if some­thing does hap­pen. Just as im­por­tant­ly, we must know how to re­cov­er, and that is where the re­sources are need­ed.

“So my un­der­ly­ing state­ment is: let us give the agen­cies the re­sources that they need to en­sure that the hu­man re­sources they’ve trained have the full ca­pac­i­ty to achieve what they want to achieve.”

Yes­ter­day’s ex­er­cise, held on Wright­son Road, in­volved a sim­u­la­tion sce­nario where a struc­ture col­lapsed and peo­ple were trapped. Smart said there will be sim­u­la­tion events na­tion­wide.

“I can’t let the cat out of the bag be­cause we want to keep the sur­prise, but we’re al­so go­ing to have some events go­ing on this evening that are go­ing to chal­lenge all of the agen­cies that are re­spond­ing and help them pre­pare them­selves for any na­tion­al event,” he said.

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­tow said all sys­tems are in place for the Crick­et World Cup.

“We have dif­fer­ent agen­cies with the same in­ter-agency op­er­abil­i­ty pro­gramme em­ployed. All the agen­cies form part of the whole com­mand sys­tem to en­sure that the World Cup is safe, that the pa­trons will be able to en­joy the game, and that the games will come off suc­cess­ful­ly,” he said.