Regional and international collaboration and communication is the main defence against the effects of weather disasters, according to speakers at a meteorological conference held in Cayman this week.
To this end, a planned Doppler radar, which is due to be erected in Cayman next year, will fill a gap in the regional network for early severe weather warnings, delegates at the 50th session of the Caribbean Meteorological Council at the Marriott Hotel heard this week.
Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organisation, said the new Doppler weather station would ensure that radar coverage of the entire Caribbean would be completed. “That would be a major, major development,” he said.
Tyrone Sutherland, coordinating director of the Caribbean Meteorological Organisation, said one of the main challenges facing small nations was finding resources to use new technologies and to communicate with countries worldwide about the most relevant information.
He said that knowing about weather in the Caribbean was not sufficient; “We need the weather from Australia, Antarctica, Russia; the United States and Cuba have to exchange… we need the whole globe.”
That can be done now with existing and developing technology, but small nations have difficulties finding the resources to access that technology, Mr. Sutherland said.
Doppler systems exist in Belize, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad, which is part of a wider regional network involving radar stations in Guadeloupe, Martinque and at the European Space Agency in French Guiana.
New stations are also being added to the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and St. Maarteen to form a “radar fence” stretching along the South American coast to Trinidad, then along the Eastern Caribbean Islands, westward to the Greater Antilles to Jamaica, Belize and Central America, Mr. Sutherland said. Cayman’s new station will “plug a black hole” in the northern Caribbean as there is no radar signal in this area, he said.
Delegates heard that, given recent environmental catastrophes in the Caribbean, there is a sense of urgency to respond to challenges brought on by such disasters.
While natural hazards cannot be prevented or avoided, all that can be done is to adapt to the challenges wrought by climate change and disasters, said Garfield Barnfield, a representative of CARICOM.
Mr. Barnfield said efforts to have closer collaboration and greater coordination on a national and regional level were constrained by various factors, including shortages of human and financial resources in an environment where national budgets were shrinking.
During the official opening of the conference, delegates also heard from Deputy Premier Juliana O’Connor-Connolly, who ditched her prepared speech to tell the visiting weathermen of her own experiences during the devastating Hurricane Paloma in November 2008.
She said she had dreamed of an impending storm on the Brac and researched online about late hurricane season storms shortly before Paloma struck.
In her home on the Brac, she sheltered in the bathroom with two children, her mother and her sister as the storm bore down, she said.
Ms O’Connor-Connolly described the feeling of helplessness and isolation as her family huddled in the dark, the roof peeling off, with no Internet connection, no radio and no communication to find out what was happening. It was only when Donovan Ebanks, now the deputy governor, called her that she found out what the conditions outside were like.
She had been considering leaving the house to take refuge at a nearby cave, but decided against it when Mr. Ebanks, who called her on a cellphone she thought was dead, told her that the eye of the storm was passing south of the island and that worse was to come.
“It is only when you don’t have information that… you truly appreciate the value and the vital significance of information that could save your life,” the deputy premier said, and she thanked the meteorological professionals at the meeting for their efforts to bring weather data to the public.
“While you’re behind your computers and charts and trying to figure out statistics, it’s not just to have an accurate report, there are actual lives, human beings… depending on every piece of data that you put out. It behoves you to fully apply yourself to your science, but equally important is to communicate it as fast and with as much efficiency as you can get it out, because there is no room for error in the job that you do,” she said.
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