Saint Lucia on Target for Natural Disaster Reduction Programme

Contact: Rose Marie Harris

November 16, 1999 - Saint Lucia continues its Natural Disaster Reduction Programme in commemoration of the year 199-2000 as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. Officials of the island’s National Disaster Preparedness Office are reporting that a national comprehensive Assessment of risk from natural hazards is integrated into their national developmental plans.

November 18 will see yet another aspect of that Plan when the long awaited Hazard-mapping workshop will be convened here.

Meanwhile information coming from the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction 1990-2000 Supplement indicates that as disasters increase, it becomes clear than neither government authorities nor local communities themselves can continue to assume the rising costs of compensating citizens for losses incurred. The only affordable solutions lie in mitigation and prevention measures. Shared information is the beginning of prevention and partnership is crucial for the successful application of disaster prevention practices.

This in fact is what the island’s National Disaster Preparedness Office is undertaking through the reconstruction of some of the Disaster Preparedness District Committees in an effort to ensure that disaster preparedness is a national effort.

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