Source: http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000006/000623.htm

The National Emergency Management Office (NEMO) in St Vincent will on Thursday meet with media managers and practitioners in an effort to enhance media capacity and ensure that disaster risk reduction and disaster management issues become part of the agenda of the local media.

A consultation and a workshop have been designed to sensitise the media about their role in disaster risk reduction and management and pertinent issues related tot his topic.

Events will include NEMO Director Howie Prince, NEMO/World Bank Consultant Theresa Daniel and Grenadian journalist Michael Bascombe.

Thursday’s events come on the heels of a consultation on Tuesday and Wednesday in which a regional disaster management consultant identified a need to focus on disaster mitigation.

Clive Lorde of the Office of Foreign Assistance (OFDA) made the comment as members of this country’s Damage and Needs Assessment (DANA) committee began a two-day meeting to review the status of the DANA activated here.

The meeting was also expected to develop a programme, implementation strategies, plan of action and timeline for implementing the Particular Response Function (PRF).

The OFDA programme has been in the region since the 1980s and, back then, OFDA, through a survey, recognised and countries indicated that one of the greatest concerns was in the area of damage assessment and needs analysis, Lorde said.

“And to this day, to a large extent we still have not gotten it as right as we could,” he said as he referred to the experiences in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina last year and Grenada after Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

“Damage assessment and needs analysis has shown itself throughout the world to be one of the weaker areas of disaster responders,” Lorde said.