Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

How ready are you for a dis­as­ter?The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) is on a dri­ve to sen­si­tise peo­ple about readi­ness should a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter hit this coun­try. ODPM chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dr Stephen Ram­roop said the coun­try can­not be ready if the Gov­ern­ment and its agen­cies alone are ready.He said the peo­ple of this coun­try al­so have to be ready.

The ODPM yes­ter­day launched its Let's Get Ready fair in prepa­ra­tion for Earth­quake/tsuna­mi Drill Day on Wednes­day.It was held at the south­ern carpark of Trinci­ty Mall and in­clud­ed sev­er­al dis­plays from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, Fire Ser­vice, De­fence Force, Coast Guard, gov­ern­ment min­istries and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

Ram­roop said, "On­ly when I can rea­son­ably say that the peo­ple are ready, then I can tell you yes. Un­til the peo­ple are ready, I can­not tell you that we are ready."ODPM might be ready, Fire Ser­vice might be ready, Po­lice Ser­vice might be ready...all these agen­cies might have some de­gree of readi­ness but if we can­not get their ser­vices to the peo­ple in the vil­lage un­der the rub­ble, then we are not ready as a coun­try."

He said the fair was launched so peo­ple would be aware that they have to start be­ing re­spon­si­ble.He said on Wednes­day a na­tion­al ex­er­cise will be held where cit­i­zens and work­places can con­duct mi­ni drills. "If peo­ple do that and tell us that they did it, then we can get an idea that peo­ple are re­al­ly lis­ten­ing to us."If they just throw away the news­pa­pers or the book­lets, then it means they don't re­al­ly care and that will tell us some­thing," Ram­roop said.