NEMO advocates for proper hurricane building codes
One month from the official start of hurricane season 2006, some Belizeans are already checking the structural integrity of their homes and businesses in case a storm threatens our shores. With that reality in mind, today the National Emergency Management Organization appealed to contractors, construction material suppliers and insurance companies to ensure that Belizean buildings meet proper codes. With technical assistance from the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency, this afternoon NEMO briefed participants at a business luncheon on the importance of maintaining construction standards.
Lt. Col. George Lovell, National Emergency Coordinator, NEMO Secretariat
?What we want to do is ensure that the suppliers, in the first instance, bring into country the materials that will be used to ensure that we have safer builders when contractors go purchase materials. While we don?t usually have a problem with that, what I note though is most people try to get the cheaper type material to construct. The ones who are more vulnerable are the poorer set people who sometimes cannot afford the more expensive things. So we do have a dilemma sometimes trying to convince suppliers to bring in things that people would not necessarily buy.?
Elizabeth Riley, Mitigation and Research, CDERA
?We just need to look at the statistics. 2004 was really a record year for the Caribbean in terms of damage. We had significant damage to Grenada, the value of the damage was about two hundred percent of the gross domestic product and that is really significant; or the Cayman Islands scenario where it was one hundred thirty-eight percent. If we look at the profile of how the damage is broken down across sectors it is really those social sectors which represent the greatest percentage of the damage. This is damage to the housing sector and also our productive sectors, tourism to agriculture. This is really the mainstays of our economies and it is very critical that we think about being resilient and how we carry out our every day operations.?
?And also at post disaster situations, some of the challenges we face in the construction sector where we are under great pressure to build, often because we have many people who are displaced, but recognizing that there is still a level of responsibility on that side as well because when we rebuild, we want to ensure that the quality of our construction is really resilient for the next time that a hazard will impact us.?
According to Lovell NEMO has also been carrying out hazard assessments to determine which parts of the country are most vulnerable to storm surge and flooding.
