By TIMOTHY SCHWAB

Grand Bahamians hope that on November 30 they will be able to a breathe a sigh of relief at having survived the 2006 hurricane season unscathed. Many residents cite the active hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 as having been a wake-up call about the need for preparedness.

Many government officials, too, acknowledge that lessons were learned in the recent hurricanes, and say that The Bahamas is better prepared today than ever before should a hurricane strike. But if a hurricane were to strike this year, one crucial aspect of hurricane preparedness – shelters – remains in a severe shortage.

According to Lilian Quant-Forbes, assistant director of the Freeport Department of Social Services and Community Development, there are currently 12 shelters in Grand Bahama, with enough space to house a few more than 3,000 people.

"We know that is far below what we need," Quant-Forbes said. "We're going to need to seriously look at being able to accommodate 12,000 persons."

National Emergency Man-agement Agency Director Carl Smith said it has always been government's advice to encourage residents to use their own homes, or the homes of relatives and friends, for shelter. Smith said it has been their preference, too, to find their own shelter.

"Our experience is that people don't go to the shelters," Smith said. "In terms of having adequate shelter...there are sufficient numbers of shelters."

While Quant-Forbes agreed that historically people have not utilized available shelters, she said that will likely change when the next hurricane strikes. Because so many homes remain damaged from previous hurricanes, Quant-Forbes said, Grand Bahamians have fewer options than they did previously.

According to Alexander Williams, Grand Bahama administrator and NEMA coordinator, Grand Bahama has "a lot of shelters, but they do not meet standards." Some of the island's shelters sustained damage in recent hurricanes that rendered them no longer suitable. Also, some available structures don't make good shelters because of their location, which might be out of the way of where people live.

The problem of establishing more shelters may be less one of identifying existing structures on the island, but building new ones.

New public schools built in the Bahamas are designed, both in structure and location, for their potential use as shelters, according to Smith. Too, Smith said the national stadium currently being built in Nassau will be able to be used as a shelter.

But as eerie a suggestion as that is on the heels of the disastrous attempt to use New Orleans' Superdome football stadium as a shelter following Hurricane Katrina, an even more obvious concern remains: the stadium is not scheduled to be finished until 2008. And the Ministry of Education in Grand Bahama was unable to say if or when any new public schools will be built.

Smith said he is hopeful that a new NEMA initiative, Natural Risk Preventative Management Program, will enable the government to "retrofit" existing structures to make them into suitable shelters. That program is being carried out in collaboration with the Inter-Ameri-can Development Bank, but has yet to be fully implemented.

The more important issue with shelters, in Smith's mind, is making available to residents long-term shelters for those who lose their homes in a hurricane. In 2004 and 2005, scores of individuals qualified to stay in a NEMA-provided trailer – some still reside there – or the Royal Oasis Hotel, where several rooms were allocated for use by hurricane-displaced individuals for several months.