Director of the Disaster management Coordination Agency Billy Darroux is on Grenada this week to participate the 16th Annual Tradewinds Exercise.
The exercise is a combination of military land and marine forces exercising several scenarios, and conducting training in military tactics, counter terrorism and organized crime, and disaster response.
Darroux and other national disaster coordinators from CDEMA Participating States are members of a Regional Observation and Assessment Team, who will assess a number of scenarios based on national and community level plans. Some international observers are also on the ground.
Other Caribbean players in the disaster management response are the CARICOM Disaster Response Unit (CDRU). The observer team is led by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency.
Observers and assessors will be deployed to observe drills at the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC), District Emergency Operations Centres (DEOC); Incident Command System (ICS) at a security and mass casualty event, community emergency shelter operations and a tsunami evacuation.
Darroux will lead a team observing and assessing ICS, Shelter activation and operation, and tsunami evacuation.
The main exercise objectives are:
- Enhance National Response Capacity.
- Test the National Disaster Plan.
- Test the Integration of RSS Forces into the Grenada National Response Plan.
- Enhance Interoperability among National, Regional and International Agencies.
- Enhance Terrorism Awareness Among National Agencies.
- Enhance Ability to Disrupt Transnational Criminal Organizations/Networks.
It is expected that Grenada and other countries in the region will benefit from the week’s activities with better local capacity to understand roles and make decisions in disaster situations, coordinate disaster preparedness and response resource allocation at the national level and district level, and effectively manage shelters.
The exercise is funded by the United States Southern Command (SouthComm), with military and technical contributions from military, maritime, police and fire services from CARICOM states.
The attendance of the Overseas Territories participants was supported by the UK Department for international Development (DFID).
