Director General of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, Ronald Jackson.

Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

DIRECTOR GENERAL of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) Ronald Jackson, along with other public sector persons with responsibilities for disaster mitigation, is suggesting that Government decentralise some of the island's emergency response agencies and services.

In Jackson's view, too many of the island's critical-care facilities are located in the Kingston Metropolitan Area (KMA), which is highly vulnerable to disasters.

Environmental forum

Jackson is speaking against the background of presentations made at an environmental forum hosted recently by the United Nations Development Programme and the ODPEM.

Environmental scientists from the Institute for Sustainable Development on the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies revealed at the symposium that the country, and particularly the KMA, could suffer tremendously if the country is jolted by a 6.5 magnitude earthquake, similar to the 1907 quake that devastated Kingston and eastern parishes.

Health-care facilities

About 80 per cent of the island's critical health-care facilities are located in Kingston and St Andrew. This includes two of three Type One hospitals, head offices of the National Emergency Response Unit and the ODPEM.

Government buildings would sustain, at best, $3.4 billion in damage, estimates environmental economist Maurice Mason. He adds that the entire country would need a total of US$30 billion ($2.1 trillion) to recover from the shock of a 6.5 magnitude earthquake.

Mason notes that the soil type of Kingston and St Andrew is more prone to liquefaction than other types of soil in other parts of the island because of its sandiness.

"We need to decentralise service provision, and by decentralising, that means some of the key agencies need to be outside of Kingston," argues physical planner Dr Carol Archer in support of the point made by the public officials.

She says such planning would allow those agencies to be better able to assist with the recovery effort should a disaster significantly affect the capital.

"It makes all sense," says Jackson. "If you look at a major event happening and your government operations are stymied, it will give the sense that there is nobody in charge of the country and you are not able to get the systems of governance up and running. It can't be that all our government entities are located in the most seismic zone."

He points out there are government buildings in Kingston that are not structurally sound and are, therefore, at severe risk.

However, physical planner Desmond Hall reasons that spreading critical agencies to other areas is not entirely necessary. He suggests, instead, the upgrading of urban centres outside the metropolis. He says there are good facilities in some of these areas that, with upgrading, would perform a satisfactory job in assisting with any recovery effort.

"I think some of the existing urban centres - Mandeville, Montego Bay, May Pen and so on - just need some kind of improvement to respond to an emergency," reasons Hall.