St. Kitts And Nevis Better Poised This Hurricane Season, Says Minister Phipps

Basseterre, St. Kitts, July 29, 2020 (ZIZ News): 

By: Chaïra Flanders

The federation of St. Kitts and Nevis is “better poised this hurricane season”.

This is according to Hon. Wendy Phipps who made the statement at Tuesday’s NEOC briefing where she explained that a preparative status report was presented in an emergency meeting with just about 40 stakeholders at the NEMA Conference ahead of the briefing.

She also said that an update about the state of the island’s infrastructure was provided during that meeting.

“In essence we would have basically received a picture of a general state of preparedness and I think to their credit, a lot of it had to do with the fact that we are already in emergency operations as of the start of our COVID first case that would have been announced on March 25 and as a result of that we would have seen quite a bit of infrastructure improvements in terms of our national security infrastructure, in terms of the health infrastructure and in terms of the community centres that would double as hurricane shelters’, she said.

Minister Phipps said that preparations over the last few months helped to further advance preparations.

“As a result of that we find that we are now better poised this hurricane season around, by the need that we would have had to put in place as a Cabinet and as a country in terms of capitalising and reinvesting in plant and operations as we build out our emergency responses over the past several months’, Senator Phipps explained.

Minister Phipps advised that although conditions are expected to improve throughout the next few hours, persons are still advised to adhere to the necessary precautions put in place by the National Emergency Management Agency.