By Caribbean Medical News Staff
Dominicans come to grips with a storm that its Prime Minister says wiped out 20 years of the island’s development in 24 hours, Barbados says it will help Dominica after the Council of Ministers of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management (CDEMA) assess the damage on the “ransacked” island.
Dominica was ravaged by Tropical Storm Erika which pounded the island with heavy rains causing mud slides and damaging infrastructure, water supply and destroying one airport. The loss of life has been estimated to be 22 individuals while this toll may yet rise, as families and Government task forces search for nine who are missing up to press time.
Barbados’ Minister of Home Affairs, Adriel Brathwaite said during a press conference at Parliament Building:
“Since last night I was receiving calls from various quarters wanting to know what is (sic) Barbados doing to assist Dominica. We needed to put the logistics in place to have an assessment in terms of the scale of their damage. In disaster recovery one of the errors that people make, is believing that you automatically know what the country requires. That is not the case,” he said.
The Minister said that he required a detailed report on Dominica’s requirements in order to coordinate a response from Barbados and across the region. The Caribbean Development Bank whose major donor is Canada had already contacted Brathwaite on what Dominica may need at this stage.
“One of the errors that is made to responses to many disasters is responding badly. You end up with things in the Port and you can’t get them out, or people receiving things that they really don’t need. This will not be the case, so let us do it properly,” Minister Brathwaite emphasized.
