NewsWhore
10-31-2007, 05:30 PM
The president of the Emergency Operations Center (COE) and the head of the weather office have provided explanations for the way in which Noel took the country by complete surprise. COE head Luis Luna Paulino told reporters from Listin Diario that these storms normally form outside the Antilles, and this gives the COE as many as five or six days to prepare. Luna Paulino told reporters that he could tell them a bunch of lies but the real problem was simple: logistics. For the Meteorological Office (Onamet) the immediate distribution of their report is easy. For the COE it means getting up at 1am and preparing a bulletin and then distributing the bulletin to the area covered by the Red Alert. This is what they did, but when they received the bulletin on the 27th, it referred to a tropical depression which by the next day would become a tropical storm. (Onamet reported the tropical depression on the 27th at 11:15pm, and by 5pm on the 28th it was named Tropical Storm Noel. This was an 18-hour window).
According to Luna Paulino, Noel started as a Green Alert on Friday 26 October, and the COE advised its provincial committees to prepare small reactive teams of 10-100 persons, according to the size of the area. On 27 October the Yellow Alert was issued and the COE contacted the provincial governors and the regional Civil Defense officials. On 28 October, when Noel was declared a tropical storm, the head of the COE activated the entire Emergency Operations Committee, called the media, and proclaimed a Red Alert. The general told reporters, " In the morning the provincial and municipal officials were mobilizing their people, and when the Red Alert went out it was Sunday afternoon. They went out looking for their volunteers. Listen, it was Sunday afternoon, even wars are halted on Sunday afternoon... It is a human thing, the people disconnect." Luna Paulino ended by saying that his people had to do everything on the hoof, and by Monday they had things organized. This time "they could not get ahead of the storm, so instead they had to go after it."
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#2)
According to Luna Paulino, Noel started as a Green Alert on Friday 26 October, and the COE advised its provincial committees to prepare small reactive teams of 10-100 persons, according to the size of the area. On 27 October the Yellow Alert was issued and the COE contacted the provincial governors and the regional Civil Defense officials. On 28 October, when Noel was declared a tropical storm, the head of the COE activated the entire Emergency Operations Committee, called the media, and proclaimed a Red Alert. The general told reporters, " In the morning the provincial and municipal officials were mobilizing their people, and when the Red Alert went out it was Sunday afternoon. They went out looking for their volunteers. Listen, it was Sunday afternoon, even wars are halted on Sunday afternoon... It is a human thing, the people disconnect." Luna Paulino ended by saying that his people had to do everything on the hoof, and by Monday they had things organized. This time "they could not get ahead of the storm, so instead they had to go after it."
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#2)