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Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment a na­tion­al cri­sis man­age­ment plan, warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains un­pre­pared for emer­gen­cies rang­ing from nat­ur­al dis­as­ters to se­cu­ri­ty threats.

Heer­ah said Fri­day's pan­ic, fol­low­ing re­ports of De­fence Force con­fine­ment, showed “how close we came to chaos.”

“Yes, it was con­cern­ing with re­gard to the pan­ic, the anx­i­ety and lit­er­al­ly the tip­toe­ing close to chaos that took place yes­ter­day,” he said. “We saw mis­man­age­ment of in­for­ma­tion that might have em­anat­ed from an of­fi­cial alert with­in the De­fence Force, which end­ed up in civil­ian hands and ran wild.”