The government announced yesterday that a unit of the Meteorological Department will be re-established on Grand Bahama.
Minister of Transport and Aviation Glenys Hanna-Martin said in the House of Assembly yesterday that the government plans to rehire two of the five people that originally operated the Freeport Weather Service in the new Grand Bahama office.
She said the department plans to engage and train three more people.
The Department of Meteorology came under fire in March, 2010 when it failed to issue an alert prior to a deadly tornado that touched down in Grand Bahama.
The tornado killed three Freeport Container Port employees and injured several others.
"This terrible event occurred just three months after the Freeport Weather Service closed its doors on December 31, 2009 leaving the island for the first time in decades without a weather advisory service which was specific to the island of Grand Bahama," said Hanna-Martin.
She continued, "In the case of the deadly tornado of 2010, a senior Met Department official was reported to have conceded that while the Bahamas Meteorological Department is responsible for issuing warnings for the entire Bahamas, the closure of the Freeport Weather service in 2009 meant that the level of communication which existed between forecasters and Grand Bahama news stations was severely diminished."
She said the new Grand Bahama office would provide complete and accurate weather coverage for the entire Bahamas.
"It will meet the need for meteorological observers to serve as tornado spotters, particularly after the residents' outcry as a result of the three deaths," said Hanna-Martin.
"This is the first stage of an expansion plan of the Department of Meteorology to have human observers on each of the Family Islands and to do away with the automatic weather observing stations which are very costly on an annual basis to maintain."

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian