Red Cross holds disaster training
The hurricane season may be months away but for once; Belize is trying to get a jump-start on things. Since Monday, various community leaders, representatives of the Belize Red Cross and concerned citizens have been trying to develop a detailed disaster preparedness program. While discussions will focus on things like infrastructure, roads, bridges, and buildings, one important issue is getting basic but key information to members of the community.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
Training the trainers is the main objective for two representatives of the International Federation of the Red Cross. Presenter Waddy Gonzalez says a detailed description of each community is essential to disaster preparedness.
Waddy Gonzalez, Representative I.F.R.C.
“We’re teaching them several steps, which are, how to identify the hazards the risks that the community has, how map to the community, how ensure we know who’s there, how people live there, the knowledge, the language skill. If all of them speak Spanish and the advisors come in English, how do we know the information is getting to them.”
“Having such a large country like you have, you have a lot of isolated communities that need to be ready on their own to survive a certain period of time after a disaster happens.”
Stepping out of Belizean workshop tradition, this group took the classroom lessons into a real community: Calla Creek in the Cayo District. Director General for the Belize Red Cross Society William Skeen says the hands-on training gave the community workers a taste of reality.
William Skeen, Director General, Red Cross Society
“We visited Calla Creek and we did a practical exercise where we identified the community. We looked at the types of hazards that could affect that community and we also looked at the probability of the hazard being there and the impact it would have on the community and what resources would be present to assist that community.”
“It behooves us since hurricanes are the most probable type of hazard to hit us, along with flooding, that we can get ready from now and at least they will be more people…we had a goal to train 2000 people by the year 2000 and it has happened with this workshop now, we would have trained 2000 people in disaster preparedness.”
Janelle Chanona for News Five.
The workshop at the Chateau Caribbean ends Friday.
