Prime Minister Urges Citizens to Obey Mandatory Evacuation Order

With a Mandatory Evacuation Order issued for several communities along the country’s south coast, Prime Minister, Dr. the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, is urging citizens to obey the legal directive.

The Mandatory Evacuation Order applies to several vulnerable communities along the south coast as Hurricane Melissa moves closer to the island.

The communities include Port Royal in Kingston; Portland Cottage and Rocky Point in Clarendon; Old Harbour Bay in St. Catherine; and New Haven, Riverton City and Taylor Land in St. Andrew.

The Order was signed under the Disaster Risk Management Act (DRMA).

Responding to a question posed during a press briefing on October 27, Dr. Holness said no compulsory evacuation has been undertaken, noting that buses and personnel have been dispatched to communities to encourage persons to leave.

“My understanding is that buses, the police and the military were mobilised into communities… encouraging persons. So, that’s what we have been doing, encouraging them, but I’m not certain if we have done any compulsory evacuation. I don’t think so, but the provision is there,” he said.

The press conference was held at the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC), located at the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) in Kingston, on October 27.

Dr. Holness informed that the Government will continue to provide the relevant information to citizens to protect lives and property.

“We have always had a very slow, if not non-response to the call for evacuation, and it is a balance between respecting the rights of persons to stay and protect their property and trying to balance the national good of saving lives and the expenditure of resources unnecessarily. I think generally we have struck the balance in favour of respecting the rights of citizens to stay where they are, though we give them the information for them to make the decision,” he said.

“We are in that zone where we have given the information; no one can say that the Government was not forward leaning in giving the information to persons who are in areas of risk. You have been warned, so it is now up to you to use that information to make the right decisions,” he said.

He explained that ODPEM as well as the Security Forces “could very well go into some areas and effect… their evacuation of persons who are there”.

“If there were a catastrophic event and persons were there in the path of the catastrophe and we were still able to go, because it’s a big if; if we were still able to go then the country, the Government and myself, I couldn’t sit by and see my citizens in danger and I am able to go and save them, even if they don’t want to be moved, and I don’t do it,” the Prime Minister reasoned.

“But I couldn’t do it unless it is within the law, and that is why we make the evacuation Orders, so that if that scenario were to materialize, within the law I’m acting, the compulsory evacuation orders have been put to ensure that there is a legal framework for the Government to act,” he said.

The mandatory Order will remain in place for the duration of the Declaration of the Threatened Area Order, which the Prime Minister declared over the island on Friday (October 24) when Hurricane Melissa was slowly moving towards the island as a tropical storm.

Now a powerful hurricane, Melissa is expected to make landfall as a category four or five hurricane bringing strong winds, heavy rainfall over the entire country, causing flooding and landslide.