The Civil Aviation Authority of the Cayman Islands is urging local business to make known any plans involving overseas evacuation of employees overseas in the event of a hurricane.
The National Hurricane Committee requests these details be sent to Richard Smith, Director-General of Civil Aviation, who is also the Chairman of the Evacuation Committee.
‘We have a few firms who on an annual basis have arrangements with a carrier overseas that in the event of a hurricane would come in and carry the staff out,’ explained Mr. Smith.
‘During Hurricane Ivan we had a lot of these operations and some of them were very last minute. Knowing in advance helps us facilitate this type of situation better,’ he said.
‘We are encouraging firms to first of all have a plan in place. If their plan is to evacuate staff overseas and whether they are depending on the scheduled carriers or other carriers we want them to let us know so that we can work around that,’ he said.
He gave an example of larger 150-seat aircraft that were brought here to assist with evacuation for Hurricane Ivan.
On some, only 70-odd seats were used by the firm, which offered the surplus seats to help the general evacuation.
In this type of situation it helps to know details in advance, Mr. Smith said.
He added that he is aware that some firms have made arrangements (have tickets in place) with a scheduled carrier whereby if there is a threat, they have 40 seats on a plane.
‘We want to know what plans people have in place, to know what we have to try to arrange,’ he said.
In September before Hurricane Ivan, more than 5,000 people were evacuated off-island. These were a mixture of visitors and residents. In the first week after the storm, 10,000 people were evacuated.
Mr. Smith said that with issues of overcrowding at the airport, the CAA can advise carriers on suitable times to come in and out so as to avoid congestion both on the runway and in the terminal building.
‘We want to stress to businesses that they should have a plan, and making it known to us can help facilitate how beneficial that plan will be,’ he said.
Plans can be submitted to [email protected]
Fax: 949-0761 or phone: 949-7811.
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