Activities included the testing of radio-communications between Saba and Sint Maarten and completing site visits on the island to explore alternative locations to bring goods to the island if the harbor and airport would not be accessible. Knowledge and information were exchanged about Saba’s crisis structure and the process of bijstandsverzoeken (request for assistance).
Local emergency response partners shared their knowledge and expertise with the visiting Rapid Infrastructure Assessment Team (RIAT) of the Armed Forces, explaining the critical infrastructure on Saba. In turn, the RIAT provided a one-day training course on how assessments are conducted. The RIAT is specialized in making assessments of buildings after they have been damaged by, for example, a hurricane. The visit to Saba was part of a larger hurricane emergency response exercise on the Windward Islands, from 14 to 20 June, by the Netherlands’ Armed Forces. This exercise is better known as the HUREX. Central to this exercise is the cooperation with various local safety and emergency response partners on the Windward Islands of Sint Maarten, Saba, and Sint Eustatius. The purpose of the training is to ensure that military personnel can be deployed quickly and effectively in the event of an actual hurricane threat. Providing military assistance during natural disasters is one of the core tasks of the Dutch Armed Forces in the Caribbean.
Public Entity Saba and the Netherlands Armed Forces wish to thank all Saban residents for their hospitality and efforts they have made during the exercise. This contributed to the goal of the HUREX: preparing the armed forces to be ready for providing emergency aid and conducting rescue operations immediately following the passage of a hurricane.
This year’s HUREX coincided with an inaugural conference to launch a Cultural Emergency Response (CER) sub-hub on Sint Maarten. This co-occurence was done purposely, as the focus during crises and disasters is naturally on saving lives, whilst saving cultural heritage is often an underappreciated but rather important subject that also needs attention.
The theme of this conference was to strengthen the protection of cultural heritage in the Caribbean region, which faces increasing threats due to natural disasters. The conference's primary objective is to create a CER sub-hub-function on Sint Maarten for Sint Maarten and its neighboring islands: Anguilla, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Kitts & Nevis and Saint Barths. The aim is to make cultural heritage a more prominent part in crisis management in the future. This goes for the 'preparedness' strategy as well as having attention for cultural heritage during a crisis or disaster. It was emphasized that cultural heritage can play a powerful role in post-disaster recovery when disaster strikes, because it is part of the community’s identity and it strengthens the bond within it.
Representatives of disaster management agencies and stakeholders in the field of crisis and disaster management, such as the RIAT, together with cultural heritage experts from CARBICA (Caribbean Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives), CER (Cultural Emergency Response) and UNESCO exchanged thoughts and knowledge on how cultural heritage can be structurally embedded within the crisis structure of the islands.
