CDEMA to receive help from humanitarian vessels to be made available from this month

By Aabigayle McIntosh

Antigua and Barbuda and other Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) member states will be getting additional assistance this hurricane season, from a humanitarian standpoint, to help bolster its preparedness.

Executive Director of CDEMA Elizabeth Riley spoke about a partnership that has evolved with Global Support Development -this is a humanitarian organization whose mission is to rapidly respond to disasters in collaboration with at risks communities and support them to prepare for future disasters.

“Global Support and Development has a unique combination of skilled response experts and leaders in the humanitarian sector. GSD has expressed its honor to partner with CDEMA in our response and preparedness efforts in the region and this relationship will be solidified later this month in St Lucia with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between CDEMA and Global Support and Development”, Riley told a news conference last Thursday.

“What we are even more excited about for the region is that part of GSD’s relationship with this region they will be posted, later this month, a state-of-the-art humanitarian vessel in the Caribbean region. The vessel is called the MV Dawn”.

She stated it is a state-of-the-art vessel that is specifically configured to provide humanitarian and disaster relief support to the affected in an effort to strengthen the disaster risk capabilities within the region, particularly in the area of logistics which is that the region always requires assistance in.

She added that MV Dawn will ensure timely and quality assistance to any impacted state and this will take place through request from the CDEMA Co-ordinating unit.

The official launch will take place on June 29th in St Lucia.

Other areas of preparedness

Over the last few months, the CDEMA logistics and relief management program has been ramped up convening five workshops in five participating states training a total of 125 persons in the specialized area.

Training has also been done on the CDEMA logistics system which is a digital platform that allows for efficient management and distribution of relief in the aftermath of events, 134 persons have been trained in this area thus far.

“We have also undertaken training with the World Food Program (WFP) on emergency logistics equipment and this allows us to rapidly set up mobile storage units and temporary warehousing facilities in states to support relief management so far we have held five workshops in five of our participating states with a total of 85 persons been trained”.

“Just last week, we convened our flagship regional exercise, Exercise Synergy on May 24th. And this focus was on strengthening the regional response mechanism and took focus on the simulation of a regional response to a multi-hazard multi-Island impact. The exercise was attended by 63 participants spanning national, regional, and international agencies and organizations”.

“During this exercise, we explored four main thematic areas through our breakout groups, regional and international coordination, and how we enhance this logistics and relief, shelter, and displaced persons. And the latter is becoming an increasing concern for our region. And the civil-military interactions which saw the exercising of the Caribbean regional civil-military coordination sell or the CRC MC and the multi-national civil-military coordination.”

That exercise was followed by Exercise Region Rap on May 25 of this year.

According to Riley Region Wrap is CDEMA’s emergency telecommunications exercise, which is conducted annually, and which tests the emergency telecommunications infrastructure in the region.

This year’s exercise simulated a chain of seismic events earthquakes, which cause the regular communication infrastructure in the region to fail, prompting the requirement for communication via satellite phones, and VHF radio.

The regional agency has also ramped up efforts in the area of recovery which she said is one of the newer areas of the technical portfolio at the CDEMA coordinating unit.

“And in a collaboration with UNDP and the European Union, we provided a post-disaster Needs Assessment workshop at the end of March of this year, which was held in Barbados, and 40 participants from seven countries attended this training.”

“Our regional training center also conducted the emergency deployment teams orientation webinar from May 30 to 31st, just a couple of days ago, and the webinar started the orientation of 31 in joules to four of the regional response mechanism deployment teams”

The CDEMA boss stated further that her staff remains ready and alert for this year’s hurricane season.