And while the City Councillors are out working the streets, business as usual continued at City Hall today.
The City Emergency Management Organization held its 6th annual Symposium on Disaster Preparedness. CEMO invited its sister agencies to discuss how they can better serve the residents of Belize City in the event of a natural disaster, as the country's largest populations center.
We stopped by the opening ceremony and asked the Mayor and the main speakers about always planning around the unpredictable forces of nature:
Darrell Bradley - Mayor, Belize City Council
"This is our 6th Annual CEMO Symposium and the theme this year is on hurricane preparedness because continues to be our major threat of a disaster. But, the real objective and purpose of it is to bring together all stakeholders. We have representatives from NEMO, from our armed services, from the NGO community, from the private sector. We have representatives from our other municipalities, and CEMO representatives and City Council Staff. And the idea is that they would come together; they would do presentations, training, capacity building. They would come up with recommendations, and they would raise public awareness on the issues of emergency management, emergency response, and in this particular case, hurricane preparedness. So that, I think that the CEMO symposium, over the last 6 years, has occupied a very useful space, because very rarely, all of our emergency management agencies come together in this kind of a gathering. I can recall that our emergency preparedness plan for a hurricane is much different than 6 years ago when I first became mayor."
Valentin Marin - Manager, Atlantic Bank Albert St. Branch
"I would firstly like to acknowledge and offer congratulations to the Mayor of Belize City, Mayor Bradley, and his team for good leadership in organizing this very important meeting. Knowledge, timely information, cooperation, collaboration are some of the key elements that are necessary, if we are to achieve this stated goals of the meeting, over these next few days."
Zaowei Yang - Representative, Taiwanese Embassy
"We have all kind of natural disaster that if you name it, we have it. Like, we have hurricanes. The version of hurricane in Taiwan is called typhoon, and each year, we have a dozen of typhoon in our area. And many times, 2 or 3 of them will strike Taiwan directly. We could never attach enough importance to the natural disaster preparedness."
Stacie Swift - Representative, Belize Port Authority
"On behalf of the Belize Port Authority, we're are once again honored and privileged to partner with the City Emergency Management Organization, to promote and educate the public of the importance of huricane preparedness, response and the resilience of municipalities."
The Symposium continues tomorrow.
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