Annual Hurricane Shelter Inspections Completed  

Hurricane safety awareness is a year-round endeavor, says the Belize City Council, which recently completed the annual inspections of Belize City’s Hurricane Shelters. These inspections are a necessary part of hurricane preparation, which isn’t reserved for just hurricane season. We spoke with Melony Dawson, the City Emergency Management Organization’s Liaison Officer, for more information.

 

Melony Dawson, CEMO Liaison Officer, Belize City Council

“We had our annual shelter inspection last week. It took us merely a week and this is comprised of a team to inspect these shelters within Belize City. This is to make sure that these shelters are structurally sound. It’s basically to provide safe space for the shelter we use during times of any disaster. What we do is, a team of us, we go out. And this team is comprised of our city engineer, our city planner, we also have our building inspectors, and in addition to that, we do this in collaboration with NEMO, of course, and the two NEMO coordinators, along with the police department, and the fire department, so everyone has a technical part to do whenever we go out to do this inspection and also to make mention we have Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education who assist us as well.”

 

Reporter

“What exactly are you checking for when these inspections occur?”

 

Melony Dawson, CEMO Liaison Officer, Belize City Council

“So we go by the National Standards for Emergency Shelters and we basically have to ensure that these buildings are structurally sound, like I mentioned. We want these buildings to be up to standards in the event of any storm. And thereafter, we have to ensure that the, for example, We look for simple things like the windows to make sure they are working well, the doors, they have the proper locks and different stuff like that.”

 

Reporter

“How many shelters were checked recently across Belize City?”

 

Melony Dawson

“We did, last week we inspected nineteen shelters and, in addition to that, after the inspection, we do our reports and these are basically findings for each of the shelters we did. We write the report and then thereafter we send it to NEMO headquarters and then from there, they do vetting of the listing and then they make their approval from there and thereafter that is where NEMO published the shelters.”