Lessons Learned:
Comprehensive Disaster Management in Grenada
PUBLIC AWARENESS
Prior to Hurricane Ivan, the Grenadian government’s communication strategy in relaying information about the severity of an upcoming hurricane was very weak. Despite improved efforts through public awareness programs in collaboration with newspapers, TV and radio stations, public response to these strategies are difficult to evaluate. As such, in an effort to evaluate the effectiveness of public awareness in disaster preparedness, it would be helpful to implement a nation-wide or parish-wide exercise to gauge the public’s response to the government’s messages.
COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
The smallness of Grenada, including limited government resources, is often seen as a weakness in disaster management. However, through the emergency response to Hurricane Ivan, it was evident that the smallness of the territory actually enabled Grenada to meet its basic needs. A World Bank and UNICEF survey shows that 50.5% of respondents received food and water from their family, while 32% and 22% of them also received support from churches and their community, respectively. The accessibility to communities also aided NaDMA, the Grenada Red Cross, and other organizations involved with the recovery efforts.
DATA AND STATISTICS
Even after Hurricane Ivan, the development of official statistics still remains a concern for the Government of Grenada. The Government did not collect key data and statistics for key stakeholders and aid organizations, and it did not fully utilize the limited data that was collected to assess the socio-economic impact of the hurricane. As such, this poses a challenge when attempting to demonstrate the severe impact of the hurricane on the Grenadian people to international donors. International donors see the positive macroeconomic indicators of a positive recovery rate and a recovery in the tourism and travel sector, but they do not see data on the poor and vulnerable segments of the population who greatly need the recovery assistance. The Grenadian government may have been able to garner additional resources had it framed the disaster through the devastating impact on the livelihoods of the people by showing statistics relating to poverty, education, and health indicators.
PROGRAM COORDINATION
Although NaDMA has greatly improved in its preparedness efforts, it still needs to improve on coordinating with other key organizations, most noticeably the Grenada Red Cross. Both NaDMA and the GRC are engaging in public awareness initiatives, but many of these seem to be duplicated. To avoid the waste of resources by working on similar efforts with the same target audience, they can improve their coordination to ensure that each is addressing a different aspect of coordination and thus better spend their limited resources.
RECONSTRUCTION AND MITIGATION
The devastating damages and the uneven speed of recovery and reconstruction after Hurricane Ivan may emphasize the importance of accelerating Grenada’s mitigation efforts in disaster management. Through the ARD’s “Build Back Better” campaign, reconstruction from the hurricane prioritized structural disaster resistance for various facilities, especially for schools and medical facilities, allowing the government to monitor new construction on public buildings to ensure it complies with disaster resisting building codes. However, despite these efforts, due to the lack of government resources, disaster-resistant building codes have not been enforced and recent land planning has not taken disaster risk reduction into consideration. Insurance is another effective measure to improve resilience, however only the tourism sector has been largely insured leaving others sectors vulnerable.