Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not af­ford to con­fuse be­ing for­tu­nate with be­ing pre­pared.

The coun­try has ex­pe­ri­enced earth­quakes, floods, land­slides, trop­i­cal storms and oth­er haz­ards over gen­er­a­tions, yet the ab­sence of a re­cent cat­a­stroph­ic nat­ur­al dis­as­ter can cre­ate a dan­ger­ous sense of se­cu­ri­ty. Re­cent events in neigh­bour­ing Venezuela and Colom­bia should serve as a pow­er­ful re­minder that the re­gion re­mains seis­mi­cal­ly ac­tive and that dev­as­tat­ing earth­quakes can oc­cur with lit­tle warn­ing.

On June 24, two pow­er­ful earth­quakes, mea­sur­ing 7.2 and 7.5, struck Venezuela. The ef­fects were felt be­yond Venezuela, with the UWI Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre sub­se­quent­ly find­ing that the earth­quakes trig­gered sig­nif­i­cant ground de­for­ma­tion at Gal­fa Point/L’En­vieuse in south­ern Trinidad.

Then, on Au­gust 10, a mag­ni­tude 7.4 earth­quake struck west­ern Colom­bia, caus­ing wide­spread de­struc­tion and hun­dreds of deaths. Dam­aged in­fra­struc­ture, in­ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty in af­fect­ed ar­eas and con­tin­u­ing af­ter­shocks have com­pli­cat­ed res­cue ef­forts.

These dis­as­ters should sharp­en the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion about pre­pared­ness.

The Gov­ern­ment’s Na­tion­al Adap­ta­tion Plan ranks earth­quakes as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s high­est-pri­or­i­ty nat­ur­al haz­ard, while flood­ing re­mains one of the coun­try’s most fre­quent and de­struc­tive threats.

T&T’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is not the­o­ret­i­cal. This coun­try sits near the bound­ary of the Caribbean and South Amer­i­can tec­ton­ic plates and has a his­to­ry of sig­nif­i­cant earth­quakes, in­clud­ing a mag­ni­tude 6.9 event in 2018. Flood­ing, mean­while, is a re­cur­ring na­tion­al prob­lem, with 695 floods record­ed in Trinidad be­tween 2011 and 2014 alone.

Cli­mate change makes the chal­lenge even more com­plex, in­ten­si­fy­ing oth­er haz­ards and in­creas­ing the like­li­hood of com­pound dis­as­ters. Heav­ier rain­fall can wors­en flood­ing and land­slides, while ris­ing tem­per­a­tures, drought, wild­fires and ris­ing sea-lev­el threat­en com­mu­ni­ties, agri­cul­ture, wa­ter sup­plies and coastal in­fra­struc­ture.

The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) co­or­di­nates a net­work that in­cludes the po­lice, Fire Ser­vice, De­fence Force, mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions, To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency and oth­er agen­cies. Its Na­tion­al Re­sponse Frame­work pro­vides for es­ca­lat­ing lev­els of na­tion­al co­or­di­na­tion when lo­cal re­sources are over­whelmed.

The ODPM has con­duct­ed In­ci­dent Com­mand Sys­tem and Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre train­ing in­volv­ing the De­fence Force and Fire Ser­vice, while fur­ther train­ing has sought to im­prove co­or­di­na­tion among emer­gency-sup­port per­son­nel. The De­fence Force pro­vides valu­able en­gi­neer­ing, lo­gis­tics, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, trans­porta­tion and man­pow­er ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

But plans, train­ing and emer­gency hot­lines can­not sub­sti­tute for ca­pac­i­ty.

The re­cent Venezue­lan and Colom­bian earth­quakes demon­strate why. A ma­jor earth­quake could dam­age roads, bridges, hos­pi­tals, util­i­ties, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and crit­i­cal in­dus­tri­al in­fra­struc­ture si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Emer­gency re­spon­ders them­selves could strug­gle to reach com­mu­ni­ties, while hos­pi­tals and mu­nic­i­pal au­thor­i­ties could face de­mands far be­yond nor­mal ca­pac­i­ty.

This is why na­tion­al pre­pared­ness must in­clude re­duc­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty be­fore dis­as­ters oc­cur.

Build­ing stan­dards must be rig­or­ous­ly en­forced, vul­ner­a­ble struc­tures as­sessed and retro­fit­ted, and hos­pi­tals, schools, bridges, wa­ter sys­tems and oth­er crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture strength­ened. Com­mu­ni­ties must un­der­stand what to do be­fore, dur­ing and af­ter an earth­quake. Emer­gency ex­er­cis­es should test whether agen­cies can func­tion when sev­er­al crit­i­cal sys­tems fail si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

The same ur­gency ap­plies to flood­ing. Bet­ter drainage, re­spon­si­ble land-use plan­ning, slope man­age­ment and pro­tec­tion of nat­ur­al buffers are dis­as­ter-pre­ven­tion mea­sures, not mere­ly en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns.

The warn­ing signs are un­mis­tak­able. Trinidad and To­ba­go has ex­pe­ri­enced seis­mic ef­fects close to home and has been for­tu­nate. But for­tune is not a dis­as­ter-man­age­ment strat­e­gy.

While there are the foun­da­tions of a cred­i­ble re­sponse sys­tem, whether they are strong enough for a cat­a­stro­phe is un­cer­tain.

This coun­try should not wait for the next ma­jor earth­quake to find out.