The location on the north coast of Saba where the new KNMI monitoring station will be installed.
SABA--The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute KNMI will be installing new monitoring equipment on Saba’s remote northern coast. On the request of local authorities, Dutch Defence in the Caribbean will help with the logistics. The small KNMI team arrived on Friday. The military personnel stationed in St. Maarten will be in Saba April 5-14.
The public entity Saba requested Defence support to transport 1,600 kilogrammes of material needed to construct KNMI’s new global navigation satellite system (GNSS)/seismic monitoring station on the north coast to measure possible seismic or volcano-related activity.
The installation on the north coast, unlike the other GNSS/seismic equipment that has already been installed in Saba, will be completely stand-alone. Satellite communication will be used to send data to KNMI and solar panels/batteries will be used to power the site in this uninhabited area.
The material for the monitoring station can only be transported on foot over the North Coast Trail to the remote, uninhabited northern side of the island. Defence has agreed to provide military personnel to transport the material.
Military personnel will be transported from St. Maarten to Saba on a fast raiding interception and special forces craft (FRISC) on April 5, after which Defence personnel will carry the material up to the construction location of the new monitoring station. The operation in Saba is a form of military assistance. Supporting civil authorities is one of Defence’s constitutional tasks.
To enable the military personnel to immediately start their work in Saba, local authorities have declared them essential workers. The military unit will only be allowed to be outside their assigned quarantining location to carry out their work. They will not mingle with the local population, nor will they visit public areas, and they are to adhere to all COVID-19 safety measures.
The same COVID-19 regulations will apply to the small KNMI team from the Netherlands. The KNMI team will install the new monitoring station on the north coast and will collect data, inspect, and, where necessary, repair the other monitoring equipment on the island.
