Castries, Saint Lucia, April 25, 2007 (NEMO) - The Saint Lucia National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) Secretariat has stepped up its public sensitization programme for this year's Atlantic Hurricane Season and is again stressing preparedness. Director Dawn French says the public should not dismiss the 2007 predictions on the basis that last year's season did not unfold as had been forecast.
Last year's hurricane season was described as having defied predictions of a fierce onslaught of storms and turned out to be relatively calm.
“But regardless of the predictions that the scientists like to engage in, we know that we in Caribbean live in the hurricane belt and even if Saint Lucia might be spared this year, another island may get hit and we will have to spring into action and help our sister nation the way we did for Grenada . If it's not our luck this year, we might be hit and other islands would have to come to our assistance,” French said.
She says trees remain a perennial concern but NEMO is not the agency that deals with tree cutting issues.
Forecaster William Gray said he expects 17 named storms this season, five of them major hurricanes with sustained winds of 111 mph or more.
Source: National Emergency Management Office P O Box 1517, Castries, Saint Lucia Tel: 758-452-3802/Fax: 758-453-2152 E-mail (main) eoc@candw.lc (alternate E-mail)slunemo@yahoo.com NEMO's Web presence: http://www.geocities.com/slunemo
