For the second time in less than six months, the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM) will undertake a review of its response to citizens affected by bad weather conditions.
In a repeat of what happened in June after the passage of Tropical Storm Bret, the ODPM has been blasted for its slow response in the latest flooding disaster which affected several areas of the country.
The organisation, charged with leading the way in the event a disaster affects the country, has taken a beating for the lapse in response time from the unfolding of events on the Divali holiday to its reaction to those events which many affected say was slow and late.
Speaking to the T&T Guardian yesterday, Relief Officer at the ODPM, Captain Neville Wint said: “After every incident, there is an after-action review where all agencies involved come together to review the incident, the action taken and how we can improve going forward.”
A similar exercise was undertaken in the wake of Bret in June. So did the ODPM learn anything from that exercise?
Wint defended the organisation saying the difference this time was “the unique occurrence of the ITCZ merging with the spring tide or new moon, so there was excessive rain and rising tides hindered the run-off.”
There were flood bulletins, he said, being issued with riverine bulletins, “that usually come like two days later but in this case, it came with the flooding event, this was the unique circumstance we faced.”
In addition, Wint echoed the words of Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan who said since June the ground had not really dried up because of constant rains.
That, according to Wint, “contributed to the sudden rise in water and the floods which we saw in the last few days. So that a challenge was the slow run-off, the effect of the riverine flooding and continuous rainfall which we are experiencing in some parts of the country right now.”
Clearly, though there is a need for the ODPM to look at what happened between June and the latest episode and factor in the issues in the review of the response to the recent floods, which even evoked some criticism from the Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley who felt that the response time needed to be improved.
Wint said all of it will be looked at when the agencies come together.
As Relief Officer, Wint is charged with co-ordinating with the first responders. From his end, he said, he has had “no problems,” communicating with various regional corporations and supporting their requests.
He said “the ODPM has been co-ordinating with first responder agencies since (last) Wednesday afternoon when we got notification of the incidents. We communicated with the various regional corporations and they activated their response mechanisms. Agencies such as the Defence Force, CEPEP and the Red Cross and volunteers have been deployed to assist the corporations in damage assessments, relief, aid operations and other duties.”
The ODPM, he said, continues to monitor weather conditions in light of the forecast for more rain “and we are working with first responder agencies to ensure that relief can be dispatched to the affected areas.”
In some areas, he said, “we need to wait for the water to subside, but we have been utilising inflatable zodiac boats to rescue persons marooned. Some persons, however, do not want to leave their homes.”
Wint said one of the most critical requests from regional corporations at this point is for “assistance with detailed damage assessment and a needs analysis. That is being done at this point in collaboration with the Ministry of Rural Development and Local Government and the Ministry of Social Development.”
Those assessments, he said, are critical “so that they can determine what persons lost and what is required and will trigger the social response from the Ministry of Social Development.”