JACKSON… the Caribbean can learn several lessons from Chile
Caribbean countries will continue to receive assistance from their Latin American partner Chile, in boosting their capabilities to prepare for, and manage natural disasters, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said yesterday.
During an official visit to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), Bachelet announced upcoming training programmes for at least four Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries under the Caricom Chile Cooperation.
According to her, the first will be held in Trinidad and Tobago in September, and will include participants from Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Jamaica and host country Trinidad. It will focus on strengthening capacities for local response in urban search-and-rescue operations.
“The second project aims at reinforcing capabilities to deal with coastal and environmental management, and it will (be) a workshop in Kingston (Jamaica) next October.
“Also we will continue working with the platform that we’re developing with the Chilean Japanese cooperation on the initiative called Kizuna, that means ‘resilience’ in Japanese. So we’re working on different aspects of disaster prevention such as criteria and construction, post-disaster assessment of structural safety; mitigation of impact of earthquakes and tsunamis, and urban rescue,” Bachelet said.
Meanwhile, Executive Director of CDEMA Ronald Jackson said the Caribbean can learn several lessons in disaster management from Chile.
He said while the region and Santiago are geographically diverse, they share the vulnerability to natural disasters.
“We have a tendency to look only at our experiences in the Caribbean. It was also interesting to hear about the challenges being faced by Chile, based on the impacts of climate change which we’re all experiencing; the issue of forest fires, increased temperature, coastal flooding. But we all know the documented history of the seismic risk in Chile.
“We know of the largest earthquakes ever recorded; we remember the 2010 earthquake and the courage displayed by the people and government of Chile in staring down that particular incident but also building back better and stronger from that. And certainly lessons we commend to our member states and our governments within the context of this cooperation,” Jackson said.
He noted that the Caricom Chile cooperation has resulted in several training programmes including a standardised manual for exercise planning, execution and evaluation for tsunami and earthquake drills; the development of tsunami inundation maps; the production of vulnerability and tsunami risk assessments; contribution to the enhancement of training in the areas of seismo-tectonics, earthquake geology with the University of the West Indies; and search and rescue training.
He added that Japan is a common partner in the area of disaster risk management for both Chile and Caricom, and the Kizuna initiative between Tokyo and Santiago offers opportunities for more direct engagement of the Caribbean through the CDEMA Regional Training Centre.