State of Emergency declared as Felix approaches
For the second night in two weeks Belizeans from north to south will have trouble sleeping as a powerful hurricane charts a tenuous course in our direction. At news time Hurricane Felix was approaching the Honduras/Nicaragua border with maximum sustained winds of one hundred and thirty-five miles per hour. The big question is whether the storm will maintain a westerly course and weaken over the mainland of Central America or simply skirt the coast of Honduras, maintain it’s strength and enter the Gulf of Honduras reinvigorated for a final run at Belize. We begin our coverage tonight in the nation’s capital where News Five’s Janelle Chanona has been speaking to key officers of the National Emergency Management Organisation.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
Today Belmopan residents and business owners were among the thousands countrywide making preparations for the impact of Hurricane Felix. At noon today the Government of Belize declared a state of emergency as a warning that the effects of the storm may be felt within the next thirty-six hours.
Godfrey Smith, Minister of Tourism, National Emergency Management
“I should state very carefully and clearly that this declaration of the state of emergency does not suggest that matters are not under control or is not intended to panic anybody. It’s simply giving the Government the power to enter into mandatory evacuation.”
“Secondly under a state of emergency the police, the security forces are given more flexibility to effect their plans of action to maintain law and order.”
Government shelters opened countrywide this afternoon, including several sites in Belize City.
Godfrey Smith
“This is to ensure that we’re in a position to gauge how many people we have to move especially tomorrow morning after we see how the storm, what it does tonight. So it is like—if you will—a gathering ground, a staging room to then pick up the people and move them to appropriate places. Obviously that is a far better position then having to move round house to house if you want to mandatorily evacuate people. That makes no sense, best you have them at a staging ground and you can then pick them up and move them.”
According to Minister responsible for National Emergency Management Godfrey Smith, the government will sponsor the evacuation of residents on the cayes and those who need assistance to transfer to higher ground. The exodus will be supervised by the District Emergency Management Organization committees and tonight officials are asking those who plan to seek refuge at the government shelters and those planning to stay with friends and family to stock up enough food and supplies for three days.
Colonel George Lovell, Coordinator, NEMO secretariat
“The reason we ask for this is that we don’t know how much water Felix will bring and there might be areas where the Government services cannot reach you because it’s probably difficult for them to get to you and in that time it would be nice if you have something to sustain you until that service can get around to you.”
According to Colonel George Lovell, NEMO will move a number of food packages to strategic locations to ensure a better response time to affected areas. Tonight we understand that the government is also negotiating with the owners of private sector buildings to make them available to the public if the need arises.
Ramon Frutos, Chief Meteorological Officer
“In ‘74 we had a double hit also. We had two storms making landfalls very close to Belize, one did make landfall which was Fifi in southern Belize and Carmen moved over or across or very close to the northern border area of Belize and that occurred in a period of almost two weeks or under two weeks.”
This afternoon Chief Meteorological Officer Ramon Frutos asked Belizeans to carefully monitor the progress of Hurricane Felix as the storm’s westerly track could shift overnight.
Ramon Frutos
“We have been watching an area of high pressure to the north of the Caribbean Sea over the Western Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico which intensified during yesterday, today and will continue to a certain extent over the course of tonight. But come tomorrow it’s possible that the Western part of this high pressure system will erode or collapse, weaken and it will open a way for Felix to try to drift a little further north of its projected path and that could happen so that’s another scenario that we need to look at that very carefully. It’s possible that as Felix moves over the extreme northern coast of Honduras and Nicaragua, later tonight and early tomorrow morning it could weaken a bit and then it will jump into the Gulf of Honduras. In the Gulf of Honduras it could either maintain its strength or get a little bit stronger as it approach the coast of Southern or Central Belize. We got to wait and see what effects the interaction with Central America will be during tonight and tomorrow morning.”
Frutos believes that within the next eighteen hours experts will be better able to estimate the storm’s intensity when it makes landfall.
George Lovell
“If we were to be impacted by another hurricane, we will be challenged because as you note, we still have not fully recovered from Dean and I would want to say that. But it is not a thing where we would not be able to cope because it means that we declare a national disaster for the entire country then we can expect a lot of international aid both in manpower and other resources coming into country.”
Godfrey Smith
“A country and its people are resilient. There is no doubt that the country will after a while come back but it takes time, it will strain us, it will be a serious challenge but we have confidence in the resilience of the Belizean people. You can’t stop living, you can’t stop going on, you can’t stop working, you have to work your way through it. It takes time, but I believe in the basic resilience and courage and strength of the Belizean people. And together we’re going to have to work our way through it, because there is no other choice but to work through it.”
Reporting for News Five, I am Janelle Chanona.
