Philipsburg—This morning at 9am, December 6, the Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs was the Keynote speaker at one of the last sessions of the CDEMA conference, entitled: “Safeguarding communities, livelihoods and economies on the road to recovery.”
Also present for the Question & Answer session were:
CDEMA Executive Director Ronald Jackson.
Virgin Islands Deputy Governor, David Archer.
Commonwealth of the Bahamas, Minister of State for Disaster Preparedness, Management and Reconstruction Iram Lewis.
And from the World Bank, Ming Zhang, Practice Manager for Urban Development and Disaster Risk Management in the Latin America and Caribbean Region.
After the Keynote speech, Prime Minister Jacobs took part in a Q & A session along with other the dignitaries.
Journalist Alita Singh moderated the session.
Below is the PM S. Jacobs speech:
It is no coincidence that this conference began here two days after the official end of the 2019 Atlantic Hurricane season which, as we all know, has been one of the most active in recent memory. It is neither a coincidence that it kicked off one day after our own official Thanksgiving Day when we gathered to give thanks to the Almighty for sparing us from the horrors of a hurricane hit. We here in St. Maarten know what it means to be struck by a monster storm. That is why our hearts and prayers go out to our brothers and sisters in The Bahamas, still trying to recover from the terrible impact of Hurricane Dorian.
Indeed, it is no coincidence that, as we speak, the United Nations Climate Change Conference is being held in Madrid. And it is certainly not a coincidence that we who contribute less than10 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions, are the most affected by its devastating effects. That is why we are here today: to find ways to work together to respond to disasters when they strike us.
CDM follows that old adage “one for all, all for one.” The second part of the saying is what really concerns us here: All for one.
As I understand it, one of the objectives of this conference is for us to learn valuable “lessons from past events and identify opportunities to inform future resilience.” Let’s focus for a minute on that word “resilience”. We all use it throughout the Caribbean to describe our people, especially in the wake of a disaster. We use “Resilience” to show how tough our people are; how enterprising and ingenuous they can be in the face of major catastrophes; how we are community-minded and become our brothers’ keepers. All of that is true. But our resilience must begin in how we collectively plan to mitigate the effects of disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, etc. In my humble view, resilient people build resilient lives and resilient economies.
While it is normal for governments to focus on the damage to infrastructure and the economy after a disaster, may I stress that our first priority should be the protection of lives. The safety of our people must always be paramount in our planning. The first thing a hurricane does is not blow away roofs and destroy businesses; the first thing a hurricane does is completely disrupt our lives even before it makes land fall. We are plunged into frenetic shopping to stock up for items that would last us for at least a couple of weeks after the disaster. Schools close, banks close, businesses close and utilities are often shut down several hours before the hurricane hits. And the first thing we do when it has left our shores is to find out if our families and friends are safe. I can tell you, for instance, that after Hurricane Luis struck St. Maarten on September 5, 1995, the projections in The Netherlands were that our island had been almost completely wiped out. They even compared us to Hiroshima. However, we had relatively few deaths – about a dozen in our half of the island – due to our people taking precautionary measures many days leading up to the hurricane. A similar scenario emerged after Hurricanes Irma and Maria on September 6, 2017.
It is for this reason that I gladly note that one of the mandates of CDEMA is “Disaster loss reduction and development of a culture of safety.” We must continue to emphasize that culture of safety so that we can minimize the loss of lives in any disaster. We should also be able to develop a way to account for every person living within our territories as accurately as possible in order to avoid what happened in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria when the official government estimate of casualties differed very significantly from what researchers were able to establish later.
As I mentioned earlier, disruption of life caused by a disaster is one of the immediate effects experienced by everyone, including those in leadership and decision-making positions. Returning to normal life after the passage of a hurricane is therefore one of our top priorities. This means the restoration of utility services – electricity, water, telephone/internet, etc. It also means the re-opening of schools and businesses as soon as possible.
I am happy to note that the vision of CDEMA is that of “A Regional Centre for Disaster Risk Management Excellence and the preferred partner for a safe Caribbean.” Every disaster risk management cycle includes:
- Prevention and mitigation
- Preparation
- The actual disaster during which not much can be done.
- Response – this involves among others, rescue; first aid, firefighting, evacuation and relief, and the assessment of damages
- Recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction – which begins with clean up, restoration of services, etc. while at the same time it offers the opportunity to rebuild, rebrand and reset priorities and be ready for the next hurricane season.
The first phase – prevention and mitigation – should not begin only when a disaster is imminent; rather, it should be a year-round mobilization, at least until we reach a level of resilience that allows us to adjust our approach accordingly. As a matter of fact, I would like to suggest that the first two phases, the Prevention and Preparation phases, should be merged and seen as one, particularly where it concerns National Disaster Plans as well as individual and group plans. We need to reconcile ourselves with the fact that we are in the hurricane belt and chances are, every year, we can expect some major hurricane to pass through our region, or perhaps in our immediate neighborhood or God forbid, right across our islands. In fact, the International Development Banks’s most recent Special Regional Report on “Infrastructure for Development in the Caribbean” states, and I quote: “As the number and intensity of hurricanes, tropical cyclones, floods, and droughts increase over the years, the Caribbean economy and population become more vulnerable. There are approximately 7.8 million people in CCB and OECS countries, and a significant share of this population lives in coastal cities. Moreover, researchers have recently projected that a sea-level increase of one meter would affect between 50 and 60 percent of tourism resort properties in the Caribbean.”
Critical to all the phases of the disaster risk management cycle is prompt and effective communication. For example, in St. Maarten, we have noticed that Weather Reports issued by our Met Office are often shunned in favor of reports from other Weather Bureaus, particularly the Weather Channel on Cable TV. This stems from the perception that reports from our own Met Office are not as reliable. As a matter of fact, many of us on this island have become “experts” at charting the trajectory of tropical storms and hurricanes, leading sometimes to either unnecessary panic or dangerous complacency. Complacency is actually one of the major issues we face as governments before an imminent disaster like a hurricane especially if we haven’t had to face any catastrophe for a long time, as was the case with Irma which came more than 20 years after the last major hurricane – Luis hit us.
The only way to counter such complacency is by issuing frequent, reliable information to the public. This requires a communication and telecommunication infrastructure that can withstand heavy storms. Unfortunately, this is the first casualty in most disasters, with radio antennas and electrical transmission networks knocked down. We obviously do not invest enough in infrastructure in general. The IDB report I referenced earlier identified this as a regional problem. It said: “Infrastructure investments are low, including in the countries that are undergoing fiscal retrenchment, implying a deterioration of infrastructure quality in several countries. These factors result in infrastructure gaps that contribute to the already complex and challenging environment for promoting sustainable growth and development in the Caribbean. The situation is made more difficult by recurrent natural disasters, which are projected to increase in frequency in the future.”
Financial and economic factors are some of the obstacles we face in infrastructure investment, but I must add that this is an area we must prioritize if we are to rebound from disasters as quickly as possible. The case of St. Maarten after Hurricane Luis in 1995 can be illustrative in this regard. Our electricity grid was knocked out almost completely because the hurricane destroyed the transmission poles that were mostly above ground. Our utility company – GEBE – thereafter embarked on a process of placing the high-tension electrical wires underground. At present, over 90% of these are underground, making the restoration of electricity faster after a hurricane.
Similarly, in 1995, we had very few cellular phones. The whole island, including government, was completely incommunicado for at least the first week after Hurricane Luis. Nobody could be reached from abroad. By the time Irma hit us in 2017, however, the number of cellular phones and Internet connections had jumped astronomically, making communication much easier and faster and hence resulting in quicker response times which could mean fewer deaths.
At this stage, permit me to offer some specific suggestions regarding how we should proceed in the future.
- Establish a Rapid Response Team for search and rescue that can be deployed in advance of a hurricane hit or immediately thereafter.
- Most, if not all our governments suffer from financial constraints, which are sometimes chronic in nature. Our annual budgets often do not contain allocations for Comprehensive Disaster Management. Budgeting for disasters should therefore be a must for all of us. We might even want to consider a Common Disaster Fund for the Caribbean to which every participating territory contributes annually, much in the same way as our people are known to practice the susu or pardner hand.
- Joint Caribbean Disaster Insurance:
On St. Maarten, many homes and businesses were underinsured or not insured at all. Only some companies had business interruption insurance. The problem is that insurance premiums skyrocketed after Luis. Some insurance companies can hardly survive the economic hit they suffer after a disaster. Since we are all small islands, the economy of scale makes insurance policies rather prohibitive in terms of cost. Maybe a joint Caribbean Disaster Insurance available to the private sector, could bring down costs. Something of this nature already exists at the governmental level.
- Pooling of Human Resources e.g. Police and/or Security personnel, teachers, doctors, nurses, and other professionals.
- Establish a Regional Reporters Corps to back up local media practitioners and transmit accurate reliable news reports that give a more factual rather than sensational account about the disaster to the outside world.
- Hurricanes and weather patterns should be incorporated into our school curricula as part of Environmental or Nature Studies, with a clear objective of not only imparting knowledge about our climate, but also of raising awareness from early about the hazards we face annually.
What then are the lessons we have learned on St. Maarten and what knowledge can we share with the rest of the region where it concerns disaster management?
Our motto after Irma was to rebuild stronger, better and smarter. Perhaps we should all consider regular inspections of our homes, businesses, schools, other emergency facilities and other constructions (possibly every two years) for storm-readiness just as we do with motor-vehicles to ensure their road-worthiness.
We often do not discuss the political casualties of disasters at fora like this one. In the case of St. Maarten, Hurricanes Luis and Irma blew everything away, including the sitting governments. In times of disaster, politics should be set aside. We should view disaster as “war” and all efforts should be geared towards prosecuting and winning that “war”. It cannot and should not be politics as usual, as difficult as it may be for politicians not to play politics and seek political advantage whenever they can. It is my considered opinion that political instability, in times of disaster, is not conducive to effective response and recovery.
If there is any sector that requires a dynamic and integrated public-private sector partnership, it is disaster management. Governments definitely cannot go it alone. Private sector partners such as community councils, churches, the Red Cross, education and medical institutions, the wider business community etc. must become an integral part of our planning and execution of disaster management.
In conclusion, St. Martin patriot, Dr. Hubert Petit, once said, a quote also repeated by Hon. St. Clair Lewis in his key note address on Tuesday: “The gale does not stop at the frontier.” This is meant to indicate that whatever happens on one side of unique island has a direct impact on the other side. I believe the same can be said of the wider Caribbean. Hurricanes do not stop at the shores of one island, as one hit anywhere in the region affects us all, either through family and friends who may be resident on the island that was directly affected or, just as importantly, through the impact on our tourism-based economies. No one knows this better than the Caribbean Tourism Organization, CTO, which has in the past and following devastating natural disasters, gone on major promotional campaigns to let the world know that the Caribbean is open for business.
We on St. Maarten are not only open for business, two years after the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, and according to the Caribbean Journal in a recent article, titled, “St. Maarten leading a Caribbean tourism comeback,” we have been “leading the way, posting tremendous tourism growth of more than 100 percent in the last year, an essential comeback for the wider area thanks to St Maarten’s crucial role as a regional transit hub.” We are truly blessed and are grateful.
The article further states that “St Maarten’s numbers represent what is easily the fastest growth rate in the wider Caribbean region, a strong statement even in a year when a number of destinations are posting solid rates of arrival growth.”
But that does not mean that we have it all together or that we are out of the woods completely; far from it. I can assure you that nobody is more aware of the fact that it only takes one, one hurricane hit, for us to start all over again from ground zero. It is now more than ever, that pre arrangements are put in place to ensure that Financing of Rebuilding projects and the procurement policies do not stagnate this process in the aftermath of a disaster.
That is why it is imperative for us to continue to Build, Adapt, and Improve our resilience, at the macro (systems), mezzo (neighborhoods) and micro levels (families and individuals), forging alliances to maximize regional cooperation in this very important field of disaster management.
I thank you.
