Hurricane Season
Would those people interested in supplying information around the country of Belize, please check in with me either personally, or via this listserve. Would like your e-mail address, your name if you care to give it, your employment if possible. Not nosy, but it would be nice to know if you are a teacher at a High School, or a farmer in the middle of the bush. It helps to put things in perspective when a hurricane is full blown and information is flying hither and dither. We require as wide a source of information as possible. I know we have people in San Ignacio, Corozal area, the Cayes of Caye Caulker and San Pedro, Dangriga, back o' bush in Belmopan and Cayo area. We also have Mary Toy in Placentia. What is missing is somebody, or several somebodies from the Toledo area and Punta Gorda. Can anyone update us on the condition of their computer access down there? Last I heard going back about 8 months ago, was that the Belize Telecommunications Monopoly had pulled the plug on e-mail accounts at the Punta Gorda Community College, High Schools, they never did have internet access. Would like a current status report on who can report and who is connected, if you please. While things are not hot yet, we are getting into the dangerous three months of the year for weather damage events and likely emergencies in Belize. Time we got things a bit organized. A message particularly to those computer operators on e-mail within the country of Belize. If you have the capability, can you widen our net sources and enlist as many other e-mail operators within the country of Belize to join the list serve? To enlist, you send a message to: [email protected] and in the body of the message, you put the word subscribe Please do not have any other information on your e-mail message. We do need some participants from the government Hurricane Emergency committee, so we can assist them with timely and useful information during any cataclysmic event. Anyone in the area of Belmopan can recruit some representatives from the various government ministries? Our information will be useful to them and we aim to please. Though it may be two months yet before anything is coming. For the correspondent in Flores, Peten. Welcome aboard, we welcome you to the Belize Hurricane Emergency net. If you have any other people, particularly in Melchor de Menchos, Tikal or other points around your area that speak English, would sincerely appreciate you getting them to come aboard this list serve. Word of mouth will do it. In Honduras, we have several volunteer participants. Considering the disaster of last year, it would behoove us to have more scattered points of inputs, from the Bay Islands and the coastal communities from Puerto Lempira, to Puerto Cortez and points in between. If you have a Spanish list serve, that's alright. I'm sure we can decipher the Spanish with volunteers on the list. If you request it, we will endeavor to print messages and information of interest and importance to Honduras on the Emergency net in Spanish as well as English, but most ordinary traffic will be in English otherwise. While many of you may be tempted to unsubscribe due to a lot of general chit chat social conversation about philosphy, and world affairs having nothing to do with the area, PLEASE stay subscribed and just learn to use the DELETE key. About 80% of the list communications outside times of emergency are just friends chatting social conversation. But you will regret that 5% to 10% of meaningfull messages that can aid you. During these hurricane dangerous months you need to stay subscribed and use the DELETE key a lot. I am particularly anxious to get reporting representation from the Toledo Area. We have had none for 3/4's of a year. Can anyone recruit people who have e-mail service in this remote district to join this list serve? Would appreciate that. In the times of emergency, we don't have time to send cars and airplanes to find out information. Nor could we afford it. Your volunteer work is very important to the nation of Belize. Just monitor this page, in times of emergency it will come alive with a different sort of traffic. During Hurricane Mitch of 98, the Miami Hurricane Center were monitoring this same list serve several times daily and getting their information from us on conditions and what was important to this area. For example, they did not think it important in Miami that the GOES 8 satellite was showing torrential rainfall along the Pacific Coast in Honduras and Nicaragua. But this list serve was reporting it. Subsequently the death toll from that rainfall was around 10,000 persons. That caught their attention at the Hurricane Center in Miami, but they could have improved their reporting on International Television Weather News if they had realized. It is one of our minor jobs to let them know what is important in this area, so they in turn can re-report in world news and thus emergency services can be alerted for faster response times. Your cooperation and assistance in recruiting more e-mail persons in scattered locations to this list serve would be appreciated. The end of this volunteer service will be around November 5th. thank you in advance, Marty
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Maintained by Ray Auxillou, Silvia Pinzon, MLS, and Marty Casado. Please email with suggestions or additions for this Electronic Library of Belize.
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