And though we are only 6 weeks into the hurricane season, the heavy rainfall of two weeks ago caused a sufficient scare in the north, blocking highways and forcing flood evacuations. We asked the minister if he believes that NEMO took too long to respond to the floods after the water began rising quickly. But he said that instead of being too slow, NEMO was responding before the flooding occurred.
Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service, Governance & Disaster Risk Management
"I know that, I have heard that the official bulletin coming out from NEMO was was, kind of delayed, but the work had already started and this is why, this type of forum is very important so that we can create that chain of information so that decisions can be made accurately, because NEMO is really only a coordinating agency. They are the ones that are supposed to be coordinating with the different ministries, with local village councils, with communities, with schools, etc., so that all of this information can be utilised to make that decision whether to evacuate, whether to open shelters, anything of that nature. I wouldn't call it a failure. It's always a learning process. And that's what we're trying to do, is to improve that. One of the areas that we're looking at is creating an app. In fact, the National MET Service has already created a weather app that you can utilise on Android phones. I think it's going to be converted for Apple devices very soon. But also, NEMO is creating an app where it is about getting out there and getting that information faster, having shelter, so that person can check, see if a shelter is open, what shelter they're supposed to go to, where the shelter is usable or not, also being able to access data when they do these assessments, when they go to households to see what type of damage they've had, if it's agricultural, if it's, structural in terms of the dwelling, etc., this is real time data that we're able to use that we're able to then, turn over to the different departments that would be going out and doing the humanitarian assistance, infrastructure assistance, the road networking assistance that might be needed in any particular area after a disaster."
