Renu­ka Singh

The wide­spread flood­ing over the past two weeks showed gaps in the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment's (ODPM) abil­i­ty to deal with a na­tion­al dis­as­ter.

Head of the ODPM Cap­tain Neville Wint con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day that he will be call­ing for in­ter­nal changes to en­sure that the unit is bet­ter pre­pared to deal with such na­tion­al crises in the fu­ture. One such change is the leg­isla­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion of a manda­to­ry evac­u­a­tion in ar­eas ex­pect­ed to be af­fect­ed by a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter like hur­ri­canes or flood­ing.

Wint said he was dis­ap­point­ed with the re­sponse from his own ODPM, the De­fence Force and the Coast Guard af­ter mas­sive floods in­un­dat­ed parts of La Hor­quet­ta, Val­sayn, and Cen­tral last Wednes­day. Days lat­er, peo­ple are still deal­ing with the af­ter­math of the loss sus­tained when sev­er­al rivers broke their re­spec­tive banks across the coun­try.

"The Coast Guard couldn't get to the af­fect­ed ar­eas be­cause they were com­ing from Ch­aguara­mas and that takes time. They were stuck in grid­lock traf­fic," Wint said.

Wint said the ODPM was re­view­ing a plan to make rafts and small flat bot­tom dinghies avail­able to the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions to ex­pe­dite the res­cue ef­forts of peo­ple strand­ed or ma­rooned by the ris­ing flood wa­ters.

Over the past few days, ma­rooned res­i­dents were res­cued by cit­i­zens in pri­vate boats. Many took to so­cial me­dia to ask for help as the State agen­cies re­spon­si­ble for help­ing seemed to have col­lapsed

Wint said he was dis­ap­point­ed with the over­all re­sponse to the flood­ing and is seek­ing to have leg­is­la­tion passed to en­force manda­to­ry evac­u­a­tion in ar­eas that are ex­pect­ed to be hit hard by a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter.

There is cur­rent­ly no leg­is­la­tion that the ODPM could levy to force peo­ple to leave their homes.

"In the ab­sence of that we are just re­act­ing and it is in­stance-based," he said.

He said a proac­tive ap­proach would be to have peo­ple at the shel­ters be­fore the sit­u­a­tion wors­ens.

"But right now we all wait and see and then act," he said.

The ODPM, he said, re­sponds to the re­gion­al bod­ies dur­ing a cri­sis.

"When the flood­ing was bad in some ar­eas in Port-of-Spain and the cor­po­ra­tion de­cid­ed it would use the Wood­brook Fa­cil­i­ty as a shel­ter, they need­ed 200 cots and blan­kets and we pro­vid­ed that for them," Wint said.

In the last bud­get, the ODPM was al­lo­cat­ed some $20 mil­lion.

"It is enough for now," he said.

He said de­spite the slow pace of the re­sponse and his own dis­ap­point­ment in the pace of the ODPM, there was no pre-plan­ning, clear­ing of wa­ter cours­es or de­silt­ing that could have pre­vent­ed the in­un­da­tion of wa­ter that swamped com­mu­ni­ties.

"You have to un­der­stand that the wa­ter­cours­es just couldn't han­dle the amount of wa­ter," he said.

"No amount of sand­bag­ging would have helped.

"Lessons have been learned, the gaps have been iden­ti­fied at all agen­cies."

He said the lessons in­clud­ed im­proved com­mu­ni­ca­tions and warn­ing sys­tems to help get the word out to the peo­ple be­fore they are im­pact­ed by floods.

ODPM's scope

The ODPM falls un­der the Na­tion­al Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Of­fice and is re­spon­si­ble for pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ty out­reach ac­tiv­i­ties, co­or­di­nat­ing na­tion­al mit­i­ga­tion and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing ef­forts to safe­guard prop­er­ty and life. The ODPM is ex­pect­ed to work with oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies and first re­spon­ders in pro­tect­ing pub­lic health and safe­ty, restor­ing es­sen­tial gov­ern­ment ser­vices and crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture and pro­vid­ing emer­gency re­lief to those se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by haz­ard im­pact.

This means that the ODPM's role as co­or­di­na­tor and man­ag­er of crises and emer­gen­cies comes in­to play through mo­bil­is­ing key play­ers and re­sources in or­der to utilise the best ap­proach to re­duc­ing the loss of life and dam­age to prop­er­ty. Some of the ODPM's ma­jor play­ers in­clude the First Re­spon­der agen­cies (Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice, the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and the Emer­gency Med­ical Ser­vices). These first re­spon­ders are the peo­ple who will be seen on the ground af­ter a haz­ard