JAMAICA would be hard put to pick up the pieces if a category three hurricane were to tunnel through the island, and would have to go crawling to its neighbours begging for food and equipment to rebuild damaged infrastructure.

Director-General of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM), Dr Barbara Carby told reporters yesterday that Jamaica would definitely need external assistance to deal with any direct hits from hurricanes above a category two, as the country simply did not have the resources to manage on its own.

"For the smaller events, I think we can manage with the preparation we have in place. However, if we have a major hurricane coming on land - categories three to five - we definitely will need external assistance," Carby said at a press briefing at ODPEM offices in Kingston.

In addition, she told the Observer that there were not enough emergency supplies in stock, if the country were to be hit by a hurricane of category three or above.

"Right now we don't have the storage capacity for that volume of supplies", she said.

"We are trying to identify more warehouse space because, ideally, I would like to see us stockpile even the basic items for up to a category 3 hurricane," she added.

Carby said the government had made monetary commitment for stocking supplies, but it could take up to three months to stock pile that amount of supplies.

Carby also pointed out that the ODPEM had boosted its human resource in preparation for this hurricane season, and had trained 500 volunteers to handle emergencies islandwide.

Shelter management capacity, she said, had also been boosted, with an additional 300 people trained since last year.

Meanwhile, the National Meteorological Service said last night that the broad surface trough which had been producing unstable weather since last week could cause flooding and landslide in some areas today.

As such, a flash flood watch has been issued for all low-lying and flood-prone areas until 5 am today.

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