TCI: DDME gears up for Hurricane Preparedness Expo, Public invited out this Friday

#Providenciales, May 21, 2019 – Turks and Caicos – On Friday the Department of Disaster Management and Emergencies will host a Hurricane Preparedness Expo, featuring its key partners in disaster readiness and emergency response and the general public is invited.

The Hurricane Preparedness Expo will take place at the Gus Lightbourne Gym and runs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. this Friday, May 24, 2019.

At least one dozen stakeholder partners will convene with informative displays and helpful personnel on site to share on their own readiness steps and respond to any public concerns.

A recent press conference where the DDME was formally introduced as the newest department under the Ministry of Tourism umbrella, is where minister with responsibility for the DDME, Hon Ralph Higgs encouraged residents to prepare for the 2019 Atlantic Hurricane Season, which begins on June 1.

“We are on the eve of the official start of the 2019 Hurricane season, do your assessments, do an inventory, know your risks, know your vulnerabilities, make plans to mitigate against those and do a test run of those plans because if in the event, heaven forbid, that we have a catastrophic storm in the 2019 season – natural or man-made – we need the ability to recover quickly so that our economy and the life as we know it, and the life that we have come to expect and enjoy is not disrupted in a way that we cannot recover.”

Tonight, Director Dr. Virginia Clerveaux and her team were using social media to inform residents of the upgrade of Sunday’s tropical disturbance to the first named storm of the season; sub-Tropical Storm Andrea.

Andrea, which comes 12 days prior to the official start of the 2019 season, is packing winds of 40 mph winds and located south of Bermuda, a fellow British overseas territory.

#magneticmedianews

#tropicalstormandrea

#ddmehurricanepreparedness