In a significant move to improve disaster readiness and response, the Minister of Rural Development and Local Government Khadijah Ameen announced plans to distribute disaster relief items to the 14 Municipal Corporations in Trinidad ahead of the rainy season.
Traditionally, the items were housed at the primary unit located at a warehouse in El Socorro. With the new initiative in place, all 14 Corporations will have ready access to their own stockpile in the event of a natural disaster.
The Minister noted that this initiative shifts from a centralised model to one of immediate localised action.
“This distribution reflects the Ministry’s commitment to disaster risk reduction, disaster preparedness and sound emergency management. Over the time, we have been working to improve the capacity of each Corporation to store items, and we will continue that. This will mean enhanced preparedness; the items will strengthen the capacity of every DMU in every part of the country to respond more speedily.”
Ms. Ameen listed a few items that will be given to the Corporations.
“Amongst the items being distributed today include mattresses and cots for our emergency shelters. We will have tarpaulin and temporary repair items for the shelters. We’ll have tools for clearing debris and minor repairs so that our trained community emergency volunteers will have tools on hand to immediately go out into the community to remove debris and do other small work that is required.”
Ms. Ameen mentioned another important initiative: the creation of fire trails that will limit the intensity of wildfires and improve response time for firefighters.
“Our DMUs and our emergency volunteers will be cutting fire trails in every municipality, and we have asked each Corporation to identify the fire trails together with the fire services. We will be working alongside them, and that in itself will mitigate the risk in terms of the spread of fires in this dry season.”
Minister Ameen issued a call to organisations and individuals to contact their Regional Corporation to be trained as emergency responders and to be integrated into the Ministry’s team so that, in times of disaster, they can better mitigate the effects and assist communities around the country.