RHONA KRYS­TAL RAM­BAL­LY

Brace for more rain­fall and floods this week as yet an­oth­er trop­i­cal wave will bring more show­ers through­out the coun­try. Al­so in the fore­cast is a rainy/hur­ri­cane sea­son which will be "very ac­tive with lots of rain." Sat­ur­day's heavy rain­fall which af­fect­ed ar­eas in north Trinidad was as a re­sult of a trop­i­cal wave which passed over T&T. Se­nior me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal of­fi­cer at the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Of­fice, Sha­keer Baig, said the trop­i­cal wave brought with it an as­so­ci­at­ed area of cloudi­ness which pro­duced show­ers and thun­der show­ers. The wave has since moved away but Baig said an­oth­er trop­i­cal wave, about 800 kilo­me­tres from Trinidad, was ex­pect­ed to­mor­row in­to Thurs­day.

Baig said there would be cloudi­ness and show­ery ac­tiv­i­ty through­out the coun­try but "it will not be as bad as Sat­ur­day." In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Baig said this year's rainy/hur­ri­cane sea­son would be "very ac­tive with lots of rain." Trop­i­cal waves and the in­ter-trop­i­cal con­ver­gence zone are two fea­tures dur­ing the rainy sea­son. In late May the Met Of­fice said: "We are in for what could be a rather in­ter­est­ing wet sea­son." Baig said: "We will be very busy in terms of the rain­fall. "Again, the sea­son has start­ed off in an ac­tive trend." He said there was a sys­tem to the west of Ja­maica which was be­ing "flagged" since there was a pos­si­bil­i­ty it could de­vel­op in­to a trop­i­cal storm.

He ad­vised there was no need to raise alarm be­cause it posed no threat to T&T. Baig said be­cause of the heavy ac­tiv­i­ty there would be a lot of storms form­ing out of the At­lantic Ocean. His ad­vice to the pub­lic was to plan and pre­pare which was al­so what the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) re­vealed last week in a state­ment. He added: "Peo­ple need to do their part around their homes. "Clean and clear their drains, trim trees and branch­es to pre­pare for high winds and do what­ev­er they can to min­imise dam­age and ex­er­cise cau­tion." Baig added rain­fall over the next two days would be ac­com­pa­nied with gusty winds and flash-flood­ing.

The hur­ri­cane sea­son of­fi­cial­ly start­ed on June 1. One of the af­fect­ed ar­eas dur­ing Sat­ur­day's rains was Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook. Dif­fer­ent­ly-abled chil­dren at the Princess Eliz­a­beth Cen­tre had to be evac­u­at­ed from the build­ing. Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er and Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing vis­it­ed the cen­tre yes­ter­day. Flood­ing has re­mained a stub­born chal­lenge for the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment since the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion, de­spite nu­mer­ous plans to al­le­vi­ate it. Last year Warn­er said "we shall even­tu­al­ly over­come the flood­ing" and hoped mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed would "put an end to the flood­ing once and for all."

In Sep­tem­ber last year thou­sands of peo­ple were strand­ed in Port-of-Spain af­ter tor­ren­tial show­ers caused wide­spread street and flash-flood­ing. The Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs, South Quay, the Pub­lic Trans­porta­tion Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion Deluxe Coach ter­mi­nal build­ing and ar­eas, such as Mor­vant, Laven­tille, Wood­brook, Mar­aval and Diego Mar­tin, were af­fect­ed.Among some of the ini­tia­tives an­nounced by the Gov­ern­ment last year were:

• Au­gust 2010: $30 mil­lion emer­gency re­lief flood mit­i­ga­tion fund ap­proved by Cab­i­net to "im­me­di­ate­ly" deal with flood­ing;

• Sep­tem­ber: Im­ple­men­ta­tion of the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar drainage plan by Dr Em­ru Mil­lette;

• Sep­tem­ber: Con­struc­tion of de­ten­tion dams in and around Queen's Park Sa­van­nah; and,

• Oc­to­ber: Plans by in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tor Kard­way Con­trac­tors Ltd to con­struct re­ten­tion ponds by the light­house on Wright­son Road (to be­gin in Jan­u­ary 2011 and com­pet­ed in April 2011).