NEMA warns Federation: Be prepared for active storm season!!
By Ryan Haas
Reporter-SKNVibes.com
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Hurricane Rita
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BASSETERRE, St. Kitts-GOLDWIN CAINES, an official for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said at a special meeting with the press on July 22 that St. Kitts-Nevis must take hurricane preparations seriously and understand that the “respite we have been enjoying should be counted as good fortune and god’s blessings”.
Many forecasters have predicted that the 2008 storm season will be an active one, but Caines stated that the level of activity in any given season is irrelevant because “it only takes one storm”.
“There has been a level of complacency induced in St. Kitts due to a lack of storms. Hurricanes do not give ETAs, nor do we ever get addresses for them.
“So, the question is, ‘will any of these tropical storms impact St. Kitts and Nevis?’ My answer is, ‘I expect it to happen and will revel in the fact that it didn’t’. We must prepare for the worst and hope for the best,” he stated.
The NEMA official went on to cite Hurricane Ivan’s catastrophic impact on the island of Grenada in 2004 as a prime example as to why St. Kitts & Nevis needs to be prepared for any storms that may develop.
“Up until Ivan impacted Grenada the previous hurricane was fifty years before. They had hurricane Janet in 1955, and when Ivan came they were as unprepared as any country could be,” he stated.
A report by the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean states that Ivan killed thirteen people and caused nearly US $889 million in damages to the island. Grenada’s economy was so affected that the country went from an expected 4.5% growth to a greater than 3% recession that year.
The following two years continued to show much slower growth for Grenada than was predicted prior to Ivan.
~~Adz:Right~~ “We should do what we have to do to ensure that…at all times we are in a state of ever ready preparedness. The thing about disaster management is to have your country poised to cushion the blow, and that you are in a position to recover quickly,” said Gomez.
The NEMA official encouraged the public to stock up on non-perishable food items, seal important documents in plastic and obtain containers for water at the start of the hurricane season instead of waiting until a storm is headed for the nation.
He also said it was a good idea for family members across St. Kitts-Nevis to have a combined shelter plan in place before a storm and not just leave those without adequate protection to community shelters, which are often unnecessarily crowded.
It has been predicted by the most eminent of hurricane forecasters, Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University that the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season will have fifteen named storms. Of those fifteen named storms, eight are predicted to strengthen to hurricanes and four of those will reach at least Category III or major status.
Since the June 1 opening of the season, there have been four named storms: Arthur, Bertha, Christobal and Dolly. Of those storms, Bertha and Dolly strengthened into hurricanes, with the former reaching the classification of a major hurricane and becoming the longest-lived, pre-August Atlantic tropical cyclone in history.
