In safe hands of the soldiers

By Brian Frederick
| Fri, July 27, 2012 - 12:01 AM

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Re Bureaucracy The Hazard by Leonard St Hill in yesterday’s DAILY NATION, how true! The only people who should be responsible for disaster management is the Defence Force, which can coordinate with the Fire Service, Police Force and Red Cross.

Being a former soldier myself and an experienced organizer, I volunteered as a damage assessment officer with the Disaster Emergency Management (DEM), duly went to a “seminar” and was issued with waterproofs, clipboard and so on, and was given a route to check in case of a disaster. That was about four years or more ago.

When Tomas struck, I contacted the DEM and suggested it had missed a golden opportunity to do a damage assessment using the “planned method of reporting back on damage and requirements”, only to be told the person responsible was out of the island.

Since then no one has contacted me to see if I am still alive, still on the island, still have the free waterproofs and still interested. I did in fact walk my route to observe any damage.

So what about the other volunteers? Does the DEM know if they are still interested? At least the Barbados Defence Force would still be on the island, and if the person responsible was not, someone else would be delegated and the team would be in place and ready to go.

Let’s leave the emergency management to an organization that can and would deal with it.