2006 Speeches

Involving Communities in Disaster Risk Management: A Call to Action

September 12, 2006

Dr. Roy L. Austin
United States Ambassador
Opening Session of Fulbright Alumni Association Conference

The Honorable Fitzgerald Hinds, Minister in the Ministry of National Security; Mrs. Victoria Mendez-Charles, President of the Fulbright Alumni Association of Trinidad and Tobago; distinguished representatives of disaster management offices of Caribbean countries; Fulbright fellows from Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Barbados; ladies and gentlemen.

I thank the Fulbright Alumni Association of Trinidad and Tobago for inviting me to speak this morning and I offer you congratulations on your 10th anniversary.

The Fulbright Program itself is also celebrating an anniversary this year, its 60th.  Over these last sixty years, the Program has enabled nearly 270,000 students and scholars to study in countries other than their own.  Over 100,000 U.S. "Fulbrighters" have studied abroad, and nearly 170,000 from 150 different countries have studied in the United States under Fulbright grants.  Currently, there are twenty-five Trinbagonians in the United States on the Fulbright program, and Trinidad’s universities host six American researchers.

In the words of Senator J. William Fulbright, who proposed the program in 1945, it "aims to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs, and thereby to increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship."

I cannot think of a better example of what Senator Fulbright was talking about than the example of T and T Fulbright Alumni convening this conference today to focus on what vulnerable communities in Trinidad and Tobago and other Caribbean nations can do to mitigate the risk of disasters in their daily lives.

The United States assists Caribbean countries with many of the challenges they face, from election assistance in Haiti to support for law enforcement here in Trinidad and Tobago.  Every assistance program comes with a set of conditions that must be met, to ensure that resources are allocated in accordance with a program's intended purpose, conditions that sometimes take much time and effort to satisfy. 

I am happy to report, however, that U.S. assistance to this and other regions in time of disaster assistance is extremely flexible and extremely quick.  As an ambassador of the United States if I tell Washington that a disaster exists in the country to which I am accredited, that the disaster is beyond the capacity of the affected country to respond, that the country is willing to accept the assistance, and that it is in the United States' interest to respond, the US Agency for International Development will immediately provide US$50,000 that can be used to purchase relief supplies locally or contributed to a local relief organization.  Our Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance staff can then deploy to the affected region to conduct assessments of additional needs, request relief commodities, and line up additional funding as needed.

Caribbean countries are all too familiar with this process.  In 2004, Hurricane Ivan caused severe damage in Grenada and several other Caribbean countries. The U.S. Government had responders on the ground the day after the storm’s passage. They carried items such as plastic sheeting to provide for immediate needs. Ultimately, the U.S. Government provided US$100 million for the Caribbean, including US$42 million for Grenada and half a million US dollars for Tobago, which also had suffered some damage.  Trinidad and Tobago for its part also offered generous support to Grenada and other neighbors in a time of dire need.

US Government preparations for the 2005 hurricane season started early.  By June 1, USAID had packed 30,000 square feet of warehouse space in Miami with commodities—including blankets, hygiene kits, plastic sheeting, medical supplies, and water containers.  USAID disaster relief experts were on standby in Bridgetown, Barbados, and San Jose, Costa Rica, ready to respond.

And as you no doubt recall, the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season produced an unprecedented 27 named storms, including 15 hurricanes. Five hurricanes—Dennis, Emily, Stan, Wilma, and Beta—and Tropical Storm Gamma tore through the Caribbean and Central America, devastating parts of the Bahamas, Cuba, Grenada, and Haiti, as well as Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua.

By the peak of hurricane season in late fall, USAID had drawn on its stockpile in Miami five times—in response to hurricanes Emily, Stan, and Beta—with airlifts to Grenada, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.

The 2005 hurricane season also demonstrated that disaster assistance goes both ways: Trinidad and Tobago gave some $2 million to charities in the United States in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. We also had individual Trinis and students of the Trillium International School who made donations to help us in our time of need.

Similar preparations were made for the 2006 hurricane season, which also has been predicted to be unusually severe, although thankfully the initial estimates have been scaled back.

But disasters come in many forms other than hurricanes, and the task of preparing for disasters and mitigating the risk to lives and property is about much more than stockpiling supplies in strategic locations. 

Modern technology allows us to monitor hurricanes from afar and predict their paths with some degree of accuracy, but other disasters, such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis, strike with little or no warning at all.  Although infrequent in occurrence, these phenomena have devastating impact when they do occur.  In the history of the Caribbean they have wiped out complete cities, killed thousands of people, and set back development efforts by years.  In addition we must consider the risk of disasters triggered by environmental or technological incidents, such as forest fires, chemical and oil spills, and the threat of an avian flu pandemic.

Effective preparedness and mitigation programs must be tailored to the specific—and often multiple—hazards that communities face.  They must build local disaster management capabilities and empower others at the government, community, and individual levels to identify, prevent, mitigate, and respond to future crises.  When nations and communities can effectively manage their own risks, mitigate disaster impacts, and avert crises, key human and economic investments are safeguarded.

We are vulnerable to the effects of natural hazards in different ways and to different degrees, and we help to influence the impact of these hazards tomorrow by the decisions we make today.

This is one of the lessons the United States learned anew from Hurricane Katrina, which hit our Gulf coast on August 29, 2005, and unleashed more destruction than any other natural disaster in U.S. history.  Some of the key problems and inadequacies of disaster preparedness on the Gulf coast had been predicted.  At least some of the people who perished in Hurricane Katrina, as in so many other hurricanes, were people who for one reason or another decided not to heed public warnings and did not evacuate.

Effective prevention and mitigation requires action at all levels, but the community level is perhaps the most important.  I have no doubt that technology will continue to give us more and more powerful tools to predict when and where disaster will strike.  But no matter how accurately we can predict, and no matter how well coordinated our warnings and relief efforts, disaster prevention and mitigation efforts will not achieve their full potential if vulnerable communities and vulnerable individuals are not aware, do not know what to do, and are not motivated to do it.

So I commend the representatives of local and regional disaster relief agencies and organizations for participating in today’s conference, and I commend the Fulbright Alumni Association of Trinidad & Tobago for convening it.  You have framed today’s discussion as a call to action, so I will conclude by urging you to make sure that today's discussions lead to concrete measures to help vulnerable communities do what they can before the next disaster strikes.