Photo op disaster management and Hurricane Elsa
Hurricane Elsa is approaching Jamaica and all I see on television are government ministers saying the country is prepared with a few Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) staff members standing there but largely silent. Whenever, an ODPEM staff member speaks, there is a tendency to repeat the politicized utterances of Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie. I grew up in this country hearing clear and useful instructions about what to do when a hurricane is approaching. Today, government politicians without training in disaster preparedness and emergency management hog the show, and side line the ODPEM professionals who have the expertise to adequately inform and safely guide the nation through the hurricane.
Up to Friday evening of 2 July 2021, the day when the hurricane watch was declared, I did not hear clear and useful instructions about what citizens should do to prepare for the hurricane, and what to do during and after the hurricane. What is worse I did not publicly hear of the activation of the parish disaster committees (not that they were not activated), and how homes should be secured, and the list of shelters that citizens can go to in each parish, how people should behave in the shelters, what they should take to the shelters, and the transportation that would take them to the shelters and the location of pick points.
The political campaign disaster management script is by now well known. One part of this script is to blame potential victims. The Minister of Local Government stated publicly on Friday that people who live in low lying areas and hence flood prone ones, would be forcibly removed for their safety. While there are a few Jamaicans who feel they are invincible and can always safely ride out the adverse weather event, the majority of people refuse to leave their homes in flood prone areas because they know that their furniture and other valuables left at home will be stolen. Thieves always break into homes left by some people housed in hurricane shelters. Usually, the police verbally reassure these people but the police do not have a track record of securing people’s possessions they leave at home because of an approaching hurricane. Another part of the script is the prime minister appearing all over the place with television cameras in tow, during and after the hurricane. This pretence gives the impression that we have a hands on prime minster who is actively doing great things during a hurricane when all we are getting is hot air. The current opposition is always silent on this matter, so obviously they are just as incompetent as the government in support of this appalling national silence, tantamount to national f*****y!
My university colleague and former head of ODPEM, Dr. Barbara Carby, has consistently spoken publicly about the absence of clear instructions to guide the people about what they should do with the approach of adverse weather events since 2016. However, the national silence continues. We are not serious as a country.
We are quick to celebrate Jamaica as successful and great country when a Jamaican does something great which is confounding personal achievement and greatness with national achievement and greatness. It seems that we yearn as a country for success and greatness yet we are unable as a people to act collectively to solve the major challenges and problems that the country faces. Despite, the confounding silence of our politicians, if Elsa does a lot of damage we will hear how well the country and the economy were doing before it was all destroyed by Elsa. The politics of delusion continues!
Christopher A.D. Charles Ph.D. is a professor of political and social psychology in the Department of Government at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Indies and is a senior research fellow at the Caribbean Institute of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, UWI, Mona.
