Fisherfolk await assistance to be fully prepared for hurricane season

The Barbados National Union of Fisherfolk Organisation (BARNUFO) is hoping to resolve issues related to communication and access to timely weather updates in the coming weeks, as they finalise plans to deal with natural disasters, including hurricanes.

BARNUFO president Vernel Nicholls made the disclosure as she spoke to Barbados TODAY about the challenges that fisherfolk were facing as they continued to prepare themselves for the ongoing Atlantic hurricane season which began on June 1 and runs until November 30.

She said after the experience last year with the freak storm event and Hurricane Elsa which battered the island and damaged hundreds of homes, many fisherfolk expressed the desire to have reliable handheld radios for communication in the event of a weather system, first for their preparation in advance of a storm, which typically involves BARNUFO working with government departments to safeguard boats and other structures, and also in the aftermath of a storm’s impact.

“The challenge that we have which I brought to their attention is that usually, in case of emergency, as long as we have electricity we can speak to each other but when we don’t have it is difficult to get information to share and to know what is happening at the different sites,” Nicholls said.

“We want to know before the hurricane what is happening at the sites, how are people preparing their vessels, and in most cases we usually have to drive around the island to do that, which is quite taxing.”

Though she admitted that boats did have their own radios and that the Berinda Cox Fishing Complex in Oistins is also equipped with a radio room, she said fisherfolk needed a mobile form of communication that could still function in the event of an islandwide power outage triggered by a storm, as was seen in 2021.

The BARNUFO president revealed that assistance had already been sought from the Department of Emergency Management (DEM) in that regard, and training on the use of such devices is expected to begin soon.

However, one other issue of grave concern for fishermen, according to Nicholls, is that the AM signal used by them to get weather updates from the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has not been functioning for some time.

She said a CBC representative had indicated they were aware of the fault.

“The satellite or some other piece of equipment that they use for the guys to be able to connect AM was not working, and they are currently working on it, so that is a challenge…. I did reach out to them recently and I plan to reach out to them again shortly to find out if the equipment has been fixed or will be fixed soon,” Nicholls said. (SB)