Raphael John-Lall

Last month’s earth­quake which dev­as­tat­ed north­ern Venezuela leav­ing over 5,000 dead and bil­lions of dol­lars in dam­age must be a wake up call for T&T.

This is the view of CEO of the T&T Risk Man­age­ment In­sti­tute (TTR­MI) and founder of the Caribbean Risk Man­age­ment Acad­e­my (CR­MA), Ken Hack­shaw, who spoke to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian last week.

“The Venezue­lan earth­quake serves as a re­minder that T&T’s ex­po­sure to re­gion­al haz­ards ex­tends be­yond its bor­ders. While the earth­quake oc­cured out­side Trinidad’s ter­ri­to­ry, the ef­fects on the south coast, specif­i­cal­ly Ce­dros and its shore­lines, demon­strat­ed how in­ter­con­nect­ed Caribbean risks have be­come,” he said.

Two weeks ago, the World Bank re­vealed that the earth­quake which struck Venezuela in June caused an es­ti­mat­ed US$19.6 bil­lion in phys­i­cal dam­age, un­der­scor­ing the coun­try’s chal­leng­ing path to re­cov­ery.

In a state­ment, the World Bank said 47 per cent of the dam­age oc­curred to res­i­den­tial build­ings, while 27 per cent oc­curred to in­fra­struc­ture and 26 per cent to non-res­i­den­tial build­ings.

Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties have es­ti­mat­ed that the mag­ni­tude 7.2 and 7.5 earth­quakes that struck Venezuela on June 24 killed at least 5,000.

Hack­shaw al­so said the event re­in­forces the need for En­ter­prise Risk Man­age­ment (ERM) to com­ple­ment the ex­cel­lent op­er­a­tional work al­ready un­der­tak­en by the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) and the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA).

Risk man­age­ment vs dis­as­ter man­age­ment

Hack­shaw said a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion is that dis­as­ter man­age­ment and risk man­age­ment are syn­ony­mous and he em­pha­sised that they are not.

He ex­plained that Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment fo­cus­es pri­mar­i­ly on: Pre­pared­ness; emer­gency re­sponse; search and res­cue; re­lief op­er­a­tions and re­cov­ery and re­con­struc­tion

En­ter­prise Risk Man­age­ment, on the oth­er hand, fo­cus­es on: Iden­ti­fy­ing emerg­ing threats; as­sess­ing strate­gic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties; re­duc­ing ex­po­sure be­fore dis­as­ters oc­cur; sup­port­ing risk-in­formed in­vest­ment de­ci­sions and build­ing long-term na­tion­al re­silience

How­ev­er, he said the two dis­ci­plines are com­ple­men­tary.

He ar­gued that the earth­quake should not sim­ply be viewed as a ge­o­log­i­cal event but as a strate­gic-learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“A whole-of-gov­ern­ment ap­proach would in­te­grate ERM with emer­gency man­age­ment to en­sure that risk con­sid­er­a­tions in­flu­ence na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, in­fra­struc­ture plan­ning, bud­get­ing, and gov­er­nance.”

He al­so not­ed that Ja­maica has leg­is­la­tion around En­ter­prise Risk Man­age­ment.

“The ob­jec­tive is to move from re­spond­ing well to dis­as­ters to an­tic­i­pat­ing, adapt­ing, re­cov­er­ing and bounc­ing for­ward more ef­fec­tive­ly,” he said.

He said by com­bin­ing: En­ter­prise Risk Man­age­ment for strate­gic fore­sight; ODPM for op­er­a­tional pre­pared­ness and re­sponse and CDE­MA for re­gion­al co­or­di­na­tion and mu­tu­al sup­port, T&T can build a more re­silient na­tion ca­pa­ble of with­stand­ing not on­ly earth­quakes, but al­so hur­ri­canes, cy­ber­at­tacks, pub­lic health emer­gen­cies, en­er­gy dis­rup­tions, and oth­er com­plex, in­ter­con­nect­ed risks.

He gave rec­om­men­da­tions that the Gov­ern­ment of T&T should con­sid­er de­ploy­ing.

He rec­om­mend­ed that there should be busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity across Gov­ern­ment and that every min­istry should main­tain test­ed Busi­ness Con­ti­nu­ity Plans (BCPs) that align with na­tion­al emer­gency arrange­ments co­or­di­nat­ed by ODPM.

This in­cludes: Al­ter­nate op­er­at­ing sites; ICT dis­as­ter re­cov­ery; suc­ces­sion plan­ning; sup­ply chain con­tin­gen­cies and cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tions

He al­so ad­vised that the Gov­ern­ment ser­vices should re­main op­er­a­tional even dur­ing sig­nif­i­cant dis­rup­tions.

He rec­om­mend­ed that the Gov­ern­ment should main­tain a dy­nam­ic and ag­ile Na­tion­al Risk Reg­is­ter that ranks strate­gic risks ac­cord­ing to: Like­li­hood; con­se­quence; ve­loc­i­ty (how quick­ly im­pacts un­fold); pre­pared­ness and in­ter­de­pen­den­cies

He said that the reg­is­ter should in­form Cab­i­net pri­or­i­ties, bud­get al­lo­ca­tions, in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment, and emer­gency plan­ning.

He added that one of the cen­tral lessons from mod­ern risk man­age­ment is that re­silience is no longer sole­ly the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of emer­gency man­age­ment agen­cies. It is a na­tion­al gov­er­nance is­sue.

“Coun­tries that in­te­grate ERM, dis­as­ter risk re­duc­tion, busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity, cli­mate adap­ta­tion, and emer­gency man­age­ment in­to a sin­gle re­silience strat­e­gy are bet­ter po­si­tioned to pro­tect lives, safe­guard eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, and sus­tain pub­lic con­fi­dence in the face of in­creas­ing­ly com­plex and in­ter­con­nect­ed threats.”

Fi­nal­ly, he used Sin­ga­pore as an ex­am­ple of how T&T can tack­le this is­sue.

“A fas­ci­nat­ing fact about Sin­ga­pore is that it is wide­ly rec­og­nized as one of the ear­li­est and most ag­gres­sive adopters of En­ter­prise Risk Man­age­ment. Long be­fore ERM be­came a glob­al cor­po­rate dis­ci­pline, Sin­ga­pore had al­ready em­bed­ded a holis­tic risk man­age­ment ap­proach in­to its na­tion­al gov­er­nance and pub­lic sec­tor. Many re­gard it as the first gov­ern­ment to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly prac­tice ERM. Be­gin­ning in the 1990s, un­der Lee Kuan Yew’s lead­er­ship, Sin­ga­pore adopt­ed a high­ly struc­tured frame­work for man­ag­ing na­tion­al risks, op­er­a­tional un­cer­tain­ties, and long-term strate­gic ob­jec­tives.”

Se­cu­ri­ty risks

Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant Garvin Heer­ah told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that the cat­a­stroph­ic earth­quakes that struck Venezuela is a stark re­minder that nat­ur­al dis­as­ters do not re­spect bor­ders, pol­i­tics, or economies and the Caribbean sits with­in an ac­tive seis­mic re­gion. T&T can­not as­sume that such a dis­as­ter could nev­er hap­pen here, Heer­ah said..

“From a re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty per­spec­tive, the great­est risk is not sim­ply the earth­quake it­self, but our lev­el of pre­pared­ness be­fore it oc­curs. Every minute lost in prepa­ra­tion to­day can trans­late in­to lives lost to­mor­row.”

He warned that if au­thor­i­ties fail to strength­en dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness, T&T faces sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant risks.

Some of these risks are:

* Mass ca­su­al­ties re­sult­ing from vul­ner­a­ble build­ings, ag­ing in­fra­struc­ture and in­ad­e­quate en­force­ment of build­ing stan­dards;

* Break­down of crit­i­cal ser­vices, in­clud­ing elec­tric­i­ty, wa­ter, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, hos­pi­tals, ports, air­ports, and emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions;

* Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges, in­clud­ing loot­ing, civ­il dis­or­der, pan­ic buy­ing and dis­rup­tion of es­sen­tial sup­ply chains;

* Eco­nom­ic paral­y­sis, with pro­longed clo­sure of busi­ness­es, en­er­gy fa­cil­i­ties, ports and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions;

* Over­whelmed emer­gency ser­vices, where search and res­cue, med­ical re­sponse, and hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance ex­ceed na­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty.

* Re­gion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an pres­sures, in­clud­ing pop­u­la­tion dis­place­ment and in­creased de­mand for Cari­com and in­ter­na­tion­al as­sis­tance.

He then em­pha­sised that pre­pared­ness is there­fore a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty im­per­a­tive—not sim­ply a dis­as­ter man­age­ment func­tion.

“T&T should ur­gent­ly re­view and strength­en its na­tion­al earth­quake readi­ness by con­duct­ing na­tion­wide emer­gency ex­er­cis­es, in­spect­ing crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, en­forc­ing re­silient build­ing stan­dards, pre-po­si­tion­ing emer­gency sup­plies, mod­ernising emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and en­sur­ing that every min­istry, lo­cal gov­ern­ment body, school, hos­pi­tal, and crit­i­cal in­dus­try has test­ed con­ti­nu­ity and evac­u­a­tion plans,” he said.

Fi­nal­ly, he called on cit­i­zens to use the re­cent earth­quake in Venezuela as an ex­am­ple of what the coun­try should do when con­front­ed with a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter on that mag­ni­tude.

“The les­son from Venezuela is clear: re­silience is built be­fore dis­as­ter strikes. Gov­ern­ments are not judged by whether an earth­quake oc­curs—they are judged by how well they pre­pare their peo­ple to sur­vive it. The time to in­vest in pre­pared­ness is now, be­cause when the earth be­gins to shake, there will be no op­por­tu­ni­ty to pre­pare.”