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By Constance Cooper
The Virgin Islands Daily News

ST THOMAS, USVI (MCT) -- The close brush of Hurricane Earl gave the US Virgin Islands a chance to get ready for a direct hit, according to Virgin Islands Territorial Emerg­ency Management Agency Director Mark Walters.

VITEMA held an after-action review meeting Friday to figure out what worked during the storm and what did not.

"We brought in all of the players that are involved in our operations on all three islands," Walters said.

What worked

Coordination between federal and local authorities was "exceptional," Walters said.

Three days before Hurricane Earl hit, Walters contacted the Federal Emergency Management Agency and asked the agency to send people to the Virgin Islands to ride out the storm.

A team of about 50 federal employees flew to the Virgin Islands on Saturday and Sunday ahead of Earl's Monday arrival.

FEMA supervised the federal response to Hurricane Earl in the territory, coordinating the efforts of several federal agencies -- including Defense Department, Transportation Department, Customs and Border Protection, Coast Guard, Trans­portation Security Admin­istration and Health and Human Services.

Walters also praised coordination among local agencies.

Starting the day before Earl hit, Walters held three to four conference calls a day with Gov. John deJongh Jr. and the heads of all local government and semi-autonomous agencies. The meetings lasted through Tuesday, the day after the storm, and provided updates on preparation, response and recovery efforts.

VITEMA's St Thomas emergency operations center also was a success, Walters said.

The center, a windowless room with dozens of computer terminals and two large screens which displayed weather updates, was mission control for the storm.

Walters activated the center Saturday and it went to 24-hour operations early on the morning of Aug. 30, the day Earl hit.

The government employees manning the center worked without sleep until mid-day on Aug. 31, when the center was de-activated.

Two other centers -- on St Croix and St John -- also operated continuously but were hampered by electricity and communications problems.

Walters praised the work done in the centers, despite the setbacks.

He also praised government workers who pitched in on jobs not normally theirs -- such as firefighters who helped clear down trees.

What needs fixing

Issue: Broken generators.

VITEMA's emergency operations center was activated on St. Croix, but it experienced electrical problems the morning the storm hit.

A generator that stopped working forced the agency to move its morning meeting with emergency service coordinators to the Port Authority conference room at Rohlsen Airport, VITEMA Assistant Director Jacqueline Heyliger said.

The generator was repaired, and the emergency operations center was moved back to VITEMA by early Monday afternoon.

The St Croix Educational Complex also lost generator power the day the storm hit, and the 14 people staying in a shelter there were moved to Herbert Grieg Home for the night.

Solutions: Hire a generator repair company and find a temporary emergency operations center.

VITEMA is hiring an outside company to repair and maintain its generators and the generators at all of the shelter sites. Previously, VITEMA employees were responsible for maintaining the agency's generators, and the entities that offered up their buildings as shelter -- such as the Education Department -- took care of their generators themselves.

In addition to generator problems, VITEMA's St Croix headquarters has mold issues. The agency is looking for an alternative emergency operations center to use until a new St. Croix headquarters, identical to the one on St Thomas, is built.

The governor's proposed budget calls for a $400,000 appropriation to VITEMA to draw up plans for the new headquarters.

Issue: More water, tarps and emergency rations are needed in the territory.

Two FEMA containers, one on St. Thomas and another on St. Croix, hold all of the tarps, potable water and Meals Ready to Eat that FEMA currently has in the Virgin Islands.

FEMA has a warehouse in Puerto Rico full of hurricane supplies, which can be brought to the territory as soon as airports or seaports are opened, but the two containers are all the supplies available until then.

Solution: Find warehouses on St. Croix and St. John.

The V.I. Property and Procurement Department is installing air-conditioning -- necessary for keeping Meals Ready to Eat fresh -- in a St. Thomas warehouse.

Walters said that FEMA will ship enough water, meals and tarps to sustain the territory for three days.

Property and Procurement is looking for similar facilities on St. Croix and St. John, Walters said.

Issue: Phone communication to the St. John emergency operations center went down.

Cell phone and landline communication to the St. John emergency operations center was cut off in the storm. The team that manned the center, located in the St. John Public Works building, had to communicate with St. Thomas by radio.

Solution: Satellite phones.

FEMA has given VITEMA three satellite phones, which are not affected by storms, to communicate among the three islands in an emergency.

Issue: Many people did not know about the curfew.

Before the storm hit, about 1,900 people were signed up to receive VI-Alerts from VITEMA's new reverse-911 system, Walters said. Now, about 2,700 people are. But news releases sent out via text messages were too long to be processed by most phones, and several people said they had trouble finding out whether there was a curfew on St. Thomas and St. John the day after the storm.

Solution: Put the important information first.

VITEMA spokeswoman Christine Lett said that in the next storm, the most pertinent information in a news release -- such as whether there is a curfew -- will be at the beginning of the document.

Copyright (c) 2010, The Virgin Islands Daily News, St. Thomas
To see more of The Virgin Islands Daily News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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