A Workshop on Early Warning System for Disasters

We are less than a month away from the start of the rainy season and today at the NEMO Headquarters in Belmopan, a two-day workshop commenced on the implementation of a Common Alert Protocol in Belize. Stakeholders from across public sector, as well as organizations that work in the preparation, management and response to disasters were engaged in the process which seeks to enable an early warning system mechanism. As it currently stands, NEMO disseminates timely bulletins and so does the National Met Services to keep Belizeans up to date with information – and in some cases, warnings – on the weather and other hazards. CAP, a technology-based protocol, is being seen as a compliment to this system that is already in place to get critical messages across to the public. News Five spoke today with Chief Meteorologist Ronald Gordon and NEMO Coordinator Colonel Shelton Defour.

Shelton Defour

Col. Shelton Defour, Coordinator, NEMO

“It will help us in terms of providing alerts to the public. We have our public advisory bulletin that goes out, but this complements it because once we agree how we can use it and when, it could provide the updates, it could trigger the first message that the public needs. So it is very complementary to the work that we do. It’s technologically driven, it is based on the internet so it does have some limitations in terms of internet access, electricity; if that is down, then you have issues. So it is a feature that adds value. We have a multilayer warning system or alert system so this is just one of the technological ones that we can use to enhance the various instruments or tools that we have in place. And surprisingly, we heard this morning that in certain villages in Belize they still use conch shell. So it’s a vast array of warning and alerting tools.”

Ronald Gordon

Ronald Gordon, Chief Meteorologist

“CAP is a multi-hazard, multi-media approach of disseminating alerts on different hazards. So you can have meteorological, climatologically, hydrological, even when you think about fires, health hazards, you can use that platform to get information out to people who are vulnerable and who can be affected by that particular hazard. Even for large systems like hurricanes there are localized effects that you’d want to put an alert for and you can use this. You can also use it to alert the entire country. So it is really timely.”

Col. Shelton Defour

“The media will continue to play a very important role because of technology, the media makes a call, goes live, the general public gets that information instantaneously once they have the means to receive it. And so the engagement with the media will be the same; we will just use CAP as a means of adding value to what we are doing.”