Expert critics Dominicans’ natural disasters prevention plan.

Santo Domingo. – An expert in natural disasters criticized the Dominican authorities’ risk management strategy for in his words placing emergency response over prevention, just one day before the start of the 2009 hurricane season.

Juan Pablo Sarmiento, co-director of the Risk Disaster Reduction Program of the Latin American and Caribbean Center, said the risk management process not only implies a response to events, but also mitigation, and above all prevention.

He said there’s been great advance in preparedness and response, but there’s already more emphasis on mitigation and resilience, which in this case, is defined as the government’s capacity to absorb an impact and maintain active controls over it.

“In Latin America we still have the culture of feeling pride with the improvisation before natural phenomena,” as some countries assume that attitude when they tout their improvisation capacity.

In his conference titled “The hurricane season as a window of opportunity for risk reduction,” Sarmiento said once the preparation is planned for phenomena, such as a hurricane, risks would be reduced because it implies an early warning process to analyze winds, precipitation, volumes and other variables.

For this season, which began Monday and extends until November 30, the formation of 14 tropical storms has been predicted, of which up to seven could become hurricanes, and up to three may be category 3, 4 and 5, in the Saffir-Simpson scale.