With se­vere weath­er in the last two weeks caus­ing floods, land­slides and dam­age to homes, for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, Garvin Heer­ah, says dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness agen­cies must start train­ing res­i­dents of high-risk com­mu­ni­ties so they can help them­selves im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing in­ci­dents.

Heer­ah made the com­ments yes­ter­day, ac­knowl­edg­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go was still in the thick of the At­lantic Hur­ri­cane sea­son and nar­row­ly es­caped Po­ten­tial Trop­i­cal Cy­clone 2, which passed be­tween the is­lands two weeks ago.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view, he said com­mu­ni­ties con­tend with flood­ing, land­slips, dam­aged bridges and oth­er haz­ardous sit­u­a­tions every hur­ri­cane sea­son.

While many State-agen­cies face blame for dis­as­ters, peo­ple con­tribute through poor prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ment.

Heer­ah ad­vo­cat­ed for a reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proach to dis­as­ter mit­i­ga­tion.

But while the threats ex­ist, he said there should be a re­view of con­stituen­cy map­pings, drills and ex­er­cis­es, as res­i­dents are usu­al­ly first at the scenes of dis­as­ters.

“When the roofs get blown off, the trapped old la­dy and her grand­daugh­ter are in the house, when the land­slips and the bridge breaks, where are the first re­spon­ders? It is im­por­tant to un­der­stand who has the skill sets in your com­mu­ni­ty, who are the trained peo­ple and what sort of abil­i­ties,” Heer­ah said.

He said plan­ning in­volves hav­ing res­i­dents with ve­hi­cles, com­mu­ni­ca­tions skills and oth­er qual­i­ties who can mo­bilise as a dis­as­ter re­sponse team un­til the State-agen­cies re­spond with equip­ment and re­sources.

Based on com­mu­ni­ty map­ping, the State-agen­cies can con­duct drills and ex­er­cis­es to test and as­sess res­i­dents’ abil­i­ties to treat haz­ardous sit­u­a­tions or threats spe­cif­ic to their com­mu­ni­ty should ad­verse weath­er oc­cur. Heer­ah said threats vary based on de­mo­graph­ics and ge­og­ra­phy.

In ad­di­tion to com­mu­ni­ty prepa­ra­tion, Heer­ah ques­tioned whether there is a Cri­sis Man­age­ment Plan (CMP) for Port-of-Spain. He said this would in­clude a prop­er strat­e­gy to va­cate the coastal cap­i­tal city, which suf­fers from peren­ni­al flood­ing. He said open­ing the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route, as has been done on pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions, was not an evac­u­a­tion strat­e­gy.

“Do we have a prop­er plan­ning process to evac­u­ate our city? Evac­u­ate our pub­lic ser­vants? Evac­u­ate all of­fi­cers, the bank­ing sec­tor, and the mer­chants? How can we cre­ate ar­ter­ies? How can we get peo­ple out?”

Heer­ah sug­gest­ed us­ing the Wa­ter Taxi Ser­vice to trans­port peo­ple dur­ing an evac­u­a­tion and en­sure T&T has the com­mu­ni­ca­tion band­width to deal with the in­crease in tele­phone calls and so­cial me­dia us­age dur­ing a cri­sis.

While the coun­try was un­der a trop­i­cal storm warn­ing on June 27, many busi­ness­es stayed open late in­to the night. Heer­ah called for es­tab­lish­ing a na­tion­al alert sys­tem so that cit­i­zens know how to re­act to the var­i­ous lev­els.

He with oth­er pos­si­ble ad­verse weath­er events ahead, agen­cies in­volved in dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness and man­age­ment must con­sid­er the size­able im­mi­grant pop­u­la­tion and the lan­guage bar­ri­er, so there will be holis­tic and in­clu­sive plan­ning.