“We have reactivated the Emergency Operations Plan for both the public health and the hospital during the tsunami warning, but there was really no good response from the National Government,” Minister Kuartei said.
He added that for disasters like that there should be proper instructions coming from the national government.
The hospital was among the evacuation priorities because of its location. “We were exposed to a real threat because the hospital is close to the sea level. There’s also the causeway, so there are no alternative sites for evacuation,” the minister added.
The minister said it was really hard to contact people for transportation or for support for food. But he said that although there was really no national effort, the MOH tried it’s best to be on top of things.
He said the plan was to discharge everybody that was walking and evacuate the eight critical patients to the Public Health office up in Meyuns. “We were ready to evacuate by 12:00 p.m. But then NEMO cancelled the warning by 9:30 a.m.,” the minister explained.
On Saturday night at around 10:00 p.m., Minister Kuartei got an email from the Center for Disease Control in the US that there was a tsunami warning in the Pacific, including Palau. By 4:30 Sunday morning, they had a nurse call every single staff in the hospital that they should meet at 7:00 a.m.
They sat down with the EOC and made plans to evacuate all patients including the workers. They even went to each patient and told them to call their families to take them home.
“There were a lot of people in the hospital that day,” shared Minister Kuartei. “It was good to talk to patients about these things so they know exactly what was happening.” He said the hospital was prepared to establish an alternative care site for emergency.
Kuartei said that it’s about time they talked about emergency preparedness. He said that there used to be planning coordination in the national level in Palau.
“It’s much critical that we are prepared on a national level especially now that there are threats of climate change, global warming and world terrorism,” the minister said.
