7 News Belize

Fear Of Flooding In Tiny Towns And Cities
posted (June 3, 2015)

On Monday, we showed you how the City Council and the City Emergency Management Organisation have increased their activities in preparation for this year's hurricane season.

Well, they were back at it today in the first of a 2-day symposium on flood mitigation. They are preparing for the eventuality that at some point during the season, Belize City will have to deal with flooding, possibly more than a few times.

CEMO teamed up with City Hall, the Pan-American Health Organisation, Oceana Belize and The Princess Ramada Hotel to host flood specialists and government officials from all across the country to discuss how each organisation deals with flooding.

One of the organisers told us how collective wisdom can wick flooding:

Wayne Usher - CEMO Liaison Officer

"It's flood mitigation, it's impact on mitigation talking on how do we deal with mitigating the effects of flooding in Belize City. And for this we've brought in people all over the country. For example we have presenters from as far away as Dangriga. We have from Orange Walk and we have from Belize City of course. We have entities like the flood mitigation project team that are here. We have people from the ministry of health, the Pan-American health. So there's a health component. Later on we will have people from the agricultural sector to see how floods have affected agriculture in Belize and we also have people from the tourism industry who will talk to us no how floods affect the tourism industry. In other words, flooding affects everyone. So our job here is to find out the different angles of how it affects us and how best to mitigate the effects of flooding, that's really what it's about."

This is the third annual symposium, and this year's theme is "Municipal Floods – Impact and Mitigation. The conference continues tomorrow.

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