The National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) in Saint Lucia through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Liberty FM 92.3, has broadened its hazard warning and dissemination capabilities nationally and locally in the south of the island for all hazards. This has been achieved through the installation of a new multi-hazard voice interrupt system. The voice interrupt system will allow NEMO to interrupt regular programming at the radio station to provide critical life-saving alerts to the public in the event of an impending hazard impact. The system is expected to contribute to community, national and regional efforts towards protecting lives and livelihoods through early warning. The fully functional system was tested during a tabletop exercise on 20 September, 2019 involving NEMO and the radio station. As part of the initiative, community and business persons as the primary beneficiaries were engaged in consultations to raise awareness on the new addition to warning dissemination tools in Soufriere.
The installation of the voice interrupt system in Soufriere was supported through the “Strengthen integrated and cohesive preparedness capacity at a regional, national and community level in the Caribbean” project. The Project supports concrete actions for an effective early warning system, as well as aims to improve information management and operational capacity for an improved Caribbean Regional Response Mechanism. Working with Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Cuba at a national and community level, and with regional early warning and response actors at the Caribbean level, United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and the International Federation of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent (IFRC) are partnering with the General Directorate of Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid of the European Union (ECHO) to reduce the risk of disasters in the region.