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Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen has warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s deeply root­ed cul­ture of dis­as­ter com­pla­cen­cy is now putting lives at risk, urg­ing cit­i­zens and state agen­cies to con­front a “new nor­mal” of un­pre­dictable cli­mate haz­ards threat­en­ing every com­mu­ni­ty.

Speak­ing at a mul­ti-agency fo­rum host­ed yes­ter­day by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) and the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (TEMA) at the Hilton Trinidad, Ameen said the coun­try can no longer re­ly on the long-held be­lief that “God is a Tri­ni” as storms, floods and even rare tor­na­does be­come in­creas­ing­ly com­mon.

“Our peo­ple have be­come numb to dis­as­ters,” she told at­ten­dees, which in­clud­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Japan, the Unit­ed Na­tions, the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­istry of Plan­ning. “Every rainy sea­son, they cook, lime and wait for the wa­ter to go down be­cause they ex­pect it. That cul­tur­al re­sponse is now a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and we must ad­dress it.”