The National Meteorological Service of Belize, with support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Hurricane Center, is hosting a three day storm surge workshop. Minister of Disaster Risk Management Henry Charles Usher says the workshop is critical as Belize remains vulnerable to hurricanes and coastal erosion:
Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service
"Like any coastline that lies below sea level it's vulnerable, in the Caribbean we are victims of climate change and we have to be able to be resilient, be responsive to these issues, be responsive when we have a tropical cyclone, we have any flooding event we know that the areas that are prone to flooding so we have to be better able to model those to predict those and be resilient in terms of the way we get back to our communities, get back to our homes to our farms to our businesses and that is where this type of workshop this type of modeling helps in that regard."
"What you're seeing is a coordinated effort or among all of the institutions that deal with this, National Hydrology Association, national met service, NEMO and the ministry of disaster risk management we're coordinating efforts so we don't duplicate what is happening but we also are better able to share that information, be better able to communicate with the communities, communicate to the population and be able to as I said, be prepared in the event of what we know is increased storm activity in region and storm surge is one for the low lying areas."
The workshop continues tomorrow.
