Experts of hurricane season and disaster management in Dominica attended this week’s edition of the Focus on Government and Development radio show. The show features different members of the government every week. These representatives provide the country’s general population with significant updates regarding the provisions and initiatives of government.
National Disaster Coordinator Fitzroy Pascal was a prominent guest in the most recent edition of the media interaction. Glenroy Toussaint, Local Government Commissioner, NEPO emergency shelter chairman, and Ithoma James, Acting Senior Meteorological Officer, accompanied him to the radio show. The DBS Radio and Kairi FM broadcasted the show live. Additionally, Facebook pages of PM Dr Roosevelt Skerrit, GIS and Youtube channel of the government of Dominica will also carried it live
In this session, the three attending experts are the programme’s special guests for their respective expertise in disaster management and the hurricane season. They came together intending to make the people of Dominica aware of the various duties and responsibilities during these months.
The season will peak around late August to September. The three prominent members appeared at a reasonable time. The nation is a week into the hurricane season of 2023. During the session, they talked about the upcoming hurricane season in detail. Ithoma James, Acting Senior Meteorological Officer, shared his predictions about the upcoming months and how the season would go.
He acknowledged that the forecasts are predicting a near-normal hurricane season. However, he stated that this does not accurately represent what people must expect. According to him, the country’s population must focus on hurricane preparedness. Experts have forecasted a near-normal means the hurricane season will start, and the hurricanes will come.
He stated that the preparation should not begin during the season but must continue all year round. Meanwhile, James recalled the last year’s devastation from the hurricane season. He stated that the hurricane came at the season’s close and caused significant property loss within Dominica. Following this, the radio show host asked if the heat correlates with the intensity of the upcoming season.
To this, the met officer responded that the MET office uses the sea surface temperature to measure the intensity of the hurricane season. Accordingly, the response to the question was positive. The attendants of the interview talked in detail about the same throughout the interview.
