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STORY: GENEVA / HURRICANE IRMA UPDATE
TRT: 1:18
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 8 SEPTEMBER 2017 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Exterior, Palais des Nations
2. Wide shot, press briefing room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Jens Laerke, UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA):
“Irma has already killed at least three people, destroyed buildings, torn roofs off the houses, left many islands without power or communication.”
4. Wide shot, panel
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Bettina Luesher, World Food Programme (WFP):
“We have emergency teams on standby, we have contingency stocks of food in Haiti for up to 150,000 people for a month, trucks already have gone, and we have food prepositioned in the Northern part of Haiti.”
6. Medium shot, journalists
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Bettina Luesher, World Food Programme (WFP):
"To all the people who are in the path, who have a chance to get out, get out. Listen to the rescue teams, get out. This is a monster storm.”
8. Medium shot, journalist
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Claire Nullis, World Meteorological Organisation (WMO):
“Model simulations indicate that hurricanes in a warmer climate are likely to become more intense and that it is more likely than not that the frequency of category 4 or 5 hurricanes will increase over the twenty-first century.”
10. Close up, journalist
11. Close up, camera
12. Wide shot, journalists
As three hurricanes sweep across the Atlantic Basin, UN relief and coordination agencies are working with "all hands on deck" to bring aid and personnel in Caribbean nations that are at risk or have already been struck by the devastating impact of hurricane Irma.
Jeans Laerke, a spokesman for the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told reporters in Geneva today (08 Sep) “for those people who have lived through or died from the effect of this hurricane it has been catastrophic.”
Referring to the hurricane's impact on the islands of Barbuda, Laerke said that “Irma has already killed at least three people, destroyed buildings, torn roofs off the houses, left many islands without power or communication.” OCHA has already dispatched teams to the region, in order the assess the damage and coordinate disaster relief. He added that a seven-person team had just arrived in Haiti.
Bettina Luescher, speaking for the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) said that the agency is working at full speed to prepare for the hurricane's impact on Haiti.
He said “We have emergency teams on standby, we have contingency stocks of food in Haiti for up to 150,000 people for a month, trucks already gone out, and we have food prepositioned in the Northern part of Haiti.”
Other work is ongoing in Cuba, were there now are food rations 270,000 people for one month, as well as in the Dominican Republic.
All agencies are calling for people to heed the warnings of national disaster authorities. Luescher added "To all the people who are in the path, who have a chance to get out, get out. Listen to the rescue teams, get out. This is a monster storm.”
Asked if the multiple hurricanes could be part of a climate change pattern, the World Meteorological Organization's spokesperson Claire Nullis said that increased frequency was not expected by climate change patterns, but that increased intensity was.
He said, “Model simulations indicate that hurricanes are likely to become more intense and that it is more likely than not that the frequency of category 4 or 5 hurricanes will increase over the twenty-first century."
