Acting Director General of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM), Mr. Richard Thompson. (Photo: JIS)
July 3, 2024
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Vulnerable people, including those living in low-lying and flood-prone areas, are being urged to evacuate to emergency shelters now before the full impacts of Hurricane Beryl hit the island.
Acting Director of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) Richard Thompson said on Wednesday people should not wait too long to move to evacuation centres.
He said shelter managers are in place and ready to receive people.
“We normally tell people to evacuate early, but people tend not to evacuate early. They tend to stay inside and see what’s going on, and then when the wind and rain start to come, they try to move to a shelter. We want people to evacuate as soon as possible. We’re sending out notifications to people to start moving now to get into a shelter,” Thompson said.
He noted that the evacuation centre management system went live three days ago.
“The latest figures we have are that 20 people have called to shelters across the island so far and we are confident that this number will increase quickly once we start to feel the full effects of the system… All shelters are operational,” Thompson said.
The national evacuation centre set up at the National Arena is up and running and ready to receive people.
— JIS
{“jamaica-observer”:”Jamaica Observer”}
