As part of projects such as Inondation, nout kartié lé paré (‘Our neighbourhood’s ready for flooding’) et Paré pas Paré (‘Ready or not?’), the Indian Ocean Regional Intervention Platform (PIROI) has been working to raise awareness of flood risks in Reunion Island. For instance on Wednesday 26 February PIROI conducted a number of awareness-raising activities in the district of Saint-Benoît.
Since June 2019 the projects’ second phase has harnessed and pooled the resources of three inter-municipal groupings (CIVIS, TCO and CIREST) and five municipalities (Saint-Louis, Saint-Paul, Saint-Leu, Saint-Benoît and Saint-André) to prepare inhabitants for flood risks.
Over the past several months an increasing number of awareness-raising actions have been taking place all across the island: training sessions on the behaviour to adopt in a flooded environment, development of awareness-raising materials, school outreach, etc.
PIROI has expanded its range of activities by holding public outreach events during which participants can visit various stands and join in games to raise awareness of natural risks and particularly flood risks, receive an introduction to first aid, simulate preparing an emergency bag, take a souvenir snapshot in a photo booth and so forth.
Recent climate events are a reminder of the importance of community-level disaster risk reduction activities (DRR) to strengthen communities’ preparedness and resilience to these natural phenomena.
