And if your disaster preparedness plan means you'll have to temporarily relocate to one of the designated shelters in your community, you might be wondering, how early is too early to move?
Well, according to NEMO coordinator, Shelton Defour, the shelters will be opened based on the need. Some areas may not be as affected as others, and so each city, town, village, and district will be monitored to see if activating the shelters is really necessary.
But he also noted that in some cases, they can be prompted to open the shelters in certain locations if there are families truly in danger.
Here's how he explained it via Zoom:
Ret'd. Col. Shelton Defour, Coordinator, NEMO
"The Shelters open based on the situation in various municipalities, so for example, San Pedro briefed this morning, they already identified their shelters, they have the keys, they've identified who needs to work at the particular shelters, and so once we get to the point where we have to do the warning, then we will activate the shelters and have them ready and if that means it's for this evening or for tomorrow morning or midday then that timeline is worked out locally with the emergency for them, Belize City, CEMO, which is different that what might be happening in Toledo but all in all the NEMO shelter committee within those emergency centers or command centers as we prefer, are ready and have the list of shelters available, and they will open the shelters. Sometimes it's by demand where the constituent rep would call to say, I just got called from three of my area or families or people in that area and they really need to get into the shelter by tonight so we are standing by for some of those prompt but at the very least, by tomorrow evening, shelters will be opened so that people could have a safe place to go to. As part of the resiliency so, we want to see besides the shelters, which is a must as a public service from NEMO, that families work together and many people will do that because the first instinct for survival is for people to go where they feel safer with families but the shelters will be opened as early as required so that we have the space for people to go into."
"For the people in San Pedro, shelter is in Belmopan, the plan is to move them to UB gymnasium because we have a shelter evacuation plan so that is where people from San Pedro and the cayes would come in. From experience, October 2012, Hurricane Rina, we did open the UB gymnasium and we did get people from the cayes who came in and sheltered there, but we noted a lot of people preferred, as I mentioned earlier, to go with families and friends. So that takes the pressure off the system somewhat."
