The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

EXPERTS at the Bahamas Telecommunications Company will have to provide an account of why the government’s multi-million dollar communications infrastructure failed at the height of last week’s devastating category four hurricane, NEMA Director Captain Stephen Russell said yesterday.

The National Emergency Management Agency lost contact with the ravaged southern islands of Acklins and Crooked Island during the height of the storm.

The storm also left islands in the central and southern Bahamas without electricity and phone service for days.

“That’s beyond me to a certain extent,” Capt Russell told The Tribune yesterday. “The national infrastructure where the government would have invested $68 million dollars, we had some challenges with it so the experts at BTC, the providers of that particular infrastructure, they have to examine and analyse that whole process because we were relying on that and that is failing.

“Similarly you have a massive electrical failure of systems, so the two of them combined really heightens our challenges of trying to get (communication).”

As the agency undergoes its “relief and response” phase over the next two weeks, Capt Russell said the main focus was geared towards ensuring relief aid and damage assessment teams were deployed to the affected areas. He added that while there are no reports of fatalities or missing persons, the agency would continue to comb through the affected communities once the waters have receded.

No shelters opened on the island of Acklins during the storm. Acklins residents complained that they were not given sufficient warning from the relevant agencies about the passage of Hurricane Joaquin, which left devastation in its wake. As the flood waters rose, many were able to escape their homes and seek refuge elsewhere.

Yesterday, Capt Russell underscored that while disaster management in those areas was affected by personal circumstances, there was always a human element that cannot be predicted during a crisis.

He said: “In due time we will have to sit down with the (Acklins) island administrator and find out why his shelters were not activated. He himself had a little challenge because he was trapped in certain areas therefore he could not make contact with his full disaster committee to make sure some things happened.

“People have their own personal challenges in the midst of these disasters. NEMA over the past few years has teamed up with our international partners, particularly the Pacific Disaster Centre.”

Capt Russell explained that the agency held a week-long training workshop with administrators and chief councillors from the southern Bahamas earlier this year.

“These same islands,” he said, “we brought them to Nassau for a full week. Experts from the Pacific, local experts here, and other international experts and they came here and we assisted them in terms of how to organise the local disaster committees and how to really manage a disaster in the area.

“Of course, you can train persons, but if you can’t bring them all together as a leader on the ground, or if there is some disjointedness in terms of the collaborative effort you’re trying to build, then you will have total system breakdown.”