Ian Allen/Staff Photographer
Residents of Mt Lebanus in St Thomas are forced to walk on a footbridge as the alternative route. The roadway was washed away during the heavy rains.
Shelly-Ann Thompson, Staff Reporter
In Sommerset, St Thomas, home-wrecking landslides during hurricanes and heavy rains are as predictable as the daily sunset.
So, when 28-year-old Stacy-Ann White, a teacher living in the community, heard about a way of preparing for hurricanes - with the hope of lessening the damage - she was quite determined to know more. She invited her neighbours too.
In the first week of June, farmers and other community members from Trinityville, Font Hill, Whitehorses, Botany Bay, Pamphret, Johnson Mountain, Taris and Spring Bank in St Thomas, participated in a two-day 'Initial Damage Assess-ment Workshop' hosted by the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM), and the Women's Resource and Outreach Centre.
Twenty-one females and three males were introduced to risk analysis, risk reduction, adverse-event management and the recovery-mitigation programme.
"They taught us how to prepare for a natural disaster. If a disaster should occur, there are ways and means to prepare things to do and not do," Lenford Brown, 38, farmer and plumber of Trinityville in Western St Thomas says. "We were also taught how to grade buildings for damage and how to reduce vulnerability."
Overview of management
The seminar also addressed the effects of hazards, how to conduct an assessment, as well as an overview of the national disaster-management programme. "What I learnt was about evaluating persons' houses," reports Stacy-Ann White. "We did a search and rescue. We were also taught resourcefulness; if we don't have something, use something else."
She adds: "We also learned to put a team together to clear roadblocks and how to get a list of everyone in the neighbourhood before an actual disaster."
Sommerset residents were also taught how to put together a mitigation team, do first aid, carry out damage evaluation to determine the amount of assistance needed, and how to identify sources of financing.
