EDITORIAL/JAMAICA: Dealing With Disaster

EDITORIAL, Daily Gleaner
Dealing with disasters

published: Wednesday | October 29, 2003

THE TRADITIONAL October rainy season is drawing to a close. This year has 
taken us back to the rainfall pattern of old time October with almost daily 
heavy showers. We are still in the hurricane season but, thankfully, we have 
been spared a hit so far; although it is not too late. The season ends with 
November and hurricanes in December are not unknown.

The ODPEM last week issued an order for residents of the flooding community 
of New River near Santa Cruz in St. Elizabeth to evacuate. In October last 
year more than 20 families had to be evacuated from the same area due to 
flooding. Disaster warning and mitigation are now firmly entrenched in the 
national scheme of things although agencies like the ODPEM face endless 
frustrations from failure to plan for disasters and to take heed to warnings.

In the 1960s, the main gullies of Kingston were paved and retaining walls 
built to regulate run-off. The project faced derision and the Government of 
the day was branded a "gully government". But just 30 years before, in 1933, 
53 lives were lost and hundreds of thousands of pounds of damage sustained on 
the night of August 14/15, when the gullies broke their banks and overflowed 
following exceptionally heavy rains.

Someone who has adopted Jamaica as home and has devoted much of his research 
work to natural hazards and disaster reduction, Dr. Rafi Ahmad of the UWI 
Department of Geology and Geography, has been honoured by the United Nations 
for his work. Dr. Ahmad has done extensive work with landslides, a 
particularly significant hazard on the mountainous terrain of the island. He 
has produced detailed hazard maps which are available for planning by both 
Government and private developers. That award-winning work began with the 
Preston Lands land slippage in St. Mary in 1986.

Dr. Ahmad is the 2003 recipient of the Sasakawa Award for Disaster Reduction 
on the recommendation of the ODPEM. Notice of the award came on October 8, 
International Day for Disaster Reduction. And the award was presented to him 
on October 16 at the Second International Conference on Early Warnings in 
Bonn, Germany. Fittingly, both the notice of the award and the award itself 
came in the month of October when we here have particular concerns about 
landslides and flooding in the rainy season. Dr. Ahmad has already received 
an award from the International Landslide Research Group in recognition for 
his expertise on landslide hazard reduction.

Our own best tribute to Rafi Ahmad would be to extensively draw upon his 
research work, done in the Jamaican context and therefore most applicable to 
us. We should use the hazard maps to the maximum in planning for and 
mitigating the inevitable events of nature, hazards which do not have to 
become disasters with such frequency.

THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT 
THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.


SOURCE: Daily Gleaner