BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, March 20th 2015 (NEMA) – The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) is preparing to test aspects of National Tsunami mechanisms, on Wednesday 25th March, 2015 at NEMA Headquarters, Lime Kiln, from 9am to 12noon. The event comes at a time when hemispheric readiness efforts have been beefed up, following the devastating event in the Indian Ocean in 2004 that killed 230,000 people in 14 countries, and inundated coastal communities with waves up to 100 ft high.
According to Jo Guard, co-chair of the Pacific Wave exercise task team, “Each country has decided on the way that they will adopt the exercise but what we’re asking all countries to do is basically get their decision makers from their Tsunami Warning Centre and their Disaster Management or Emergency Management office people together at a minimum, sit around a table and work through a number of scenarios that will play out so that they can make some decisions about what they would do for their countries under those scenario conditions.”
National Disaster Coordinator, Carl Herbert says that “... the exercise will allow stakeholders and other emergency managers to test Tsunami Protocols and Standard Operating Procedures for responding to a Tsunami.” He says that this is in the wake of workshops and other actions spearheaded by NEMA, in collaboration with its partners, to develop related plans as part of the function of the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC), which is the epicenter for response coordination in the event of a disaster.
Vesta I. Southwell
Public Relations Officer
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