The heavy down­pour that fell on the North-West penin­su­la was un­usu­al­ly ro­bust, de­spite as­sur­ances from the me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal of­fice that the rain­fall was not out of the or­di­nary for this time of the year. Me­te­o­rol­o­gists sug­gest­ed that the ocean's high tide might have made it dif­fi­cult for the rain wa­ter to flow out to sea. It may be that the ac­tu­al num­ber of inch­es of rain is stan­dard, but it fell heav­i­ly and fast and chal­lenged the ca­pac­i­ty of rivers and drainage sys­tems to man­age the wa­ter that came rush­ing through St James, Diego Mar­tin, Co­corite, Wood­brook, Dibe and Mar­aval. De­bris came along with the flood wa­ters, which broke the banks of the Mar­aval rivers bring­ing flood wa­ters that were re­port­ed to rise high­er than four feet in some ar­eas, leav­ing be­hind bricks, logs, rub­bish and mud and a sur­pris­ing swath of de­struc­tion in a re­mark­ably short time.

A house col­lapsed in Dibe, St James, cars were washed in­to riv­er cours­es and part of the re­tain­ing wall built around the Coun­try Club in Mar­aval as part of the re­struc­tur­ing of traf­fic flows there came crash­ing down. Wa­ter­logged earth was be­lieved to have pushed the re­cent­ly con­struct­ed wall apart and in­to elec­tri­cal poles which had to be re­paired by teams from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion. Re­pairs to the wall were es­ti­mat­ed by Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er to cost more than $2 mil­lion, though the dam­age to the wall was be­ing laud­ed by gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials as hav­ing saved prop­er­ties across the road from the club from even greater dam­age.

A few hours af­ter the wall col­lapsed, the Min­istry of Works had be­gun de­mol­ish­ing the af­fect­ed ar­eas of the wall and re­mov­ing it. Well in­to the night on Sat­ur­day, traf­fic head­ing east out of Diego Mar­tin and Glen­coe re­mained in grid­lock, crawl­ing past cleanup works be­ing con­duct­ed on the north­ern lane of the West­ern Main Road in Co­corite as work crews with back­hoes, po­lice of­fi­cers and fire­men at­tempt­ed to re­move the rivers of mud that had flowed down in­to the road­way. To their cred­it, the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment mo­bilised quick­ly at crit­i­cal sites and opened a shel­ter at the North Diego Mar­tin Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre for peo­ple un­able to re­turn to their homes. Chair­man of the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, An­tho­ny Sam­my, de­clared Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral, Mar­aval and West­moor­ings emer­gency ar­eas af­ter see­ing the re­sults the flood­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the ODPM chief ex­ec­u­tive Dr Stephen Ram­roop, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, the Works Min­istry, CEPEP, the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) and the First En­gi­neer­ing Bat­tal­ion of the Reg­i­ment were mo­bilised to work on the clear­ing of roads and drains af­ter the scale of the dis­as­ter be­came ap­par­ent. Thank­ful­ly, Min­is­ter of Works Jack Warn­er moved the ques­tions about the col­lapsed Mar­aval Road wall from (the pre­dictable but tied) po­lit­i­cal jibes to the larg­er is­sue of un­reg­u­lat­ed de­vel­op­ment and the en­su­ing in­crease in runoff that has led, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Port-of-Spain and its sub­urbs, to sharp in­creas­es in flood wa­ters threat­en­ing prop­er­ty and lives.

It's clear that man­ag­ing the sit­u­a­tion that the coun­try faces in 2011 will have to pro­ceed along two paths: one pre­ven­tive as city plan­ners more ful­ly en­gage the con­se­quences of de­vel­op­ment that takes place with no re­gard for har­mo­ny with the re­al­i­ties of our in­fra­struc­ture and en­vi­ron­ment, and the oth­er re­me­di­al, deal­ing with the ca­pac­i­ties of our wa­ter­cours­es to han­dle the re­al­i­ties of to­day's greater wa­ter ca­pac­i­ties af­ter even a rel­a­tive­ly short pe­ri­od of rain fall.

While there have been some im­prove­ments in the clear­ing of wa­ter­cours­es and the crit­i­cal re­sponse times of the ODPM to ar­eas that have been sub­stan­tial­ly hit by nat­ur­al dis­as­ter, there re­mains room for im­prove­ment and con­tin­u­ing mon­i­tor­ing of these long stand­ing mat­ters of na­tion­al safe­ty and dis­as­ter re­sponse. But these is­sues will on­ly con­tin­ue to grow more dan­ger­ous if the root prob­lem at the core of these drainage fail­ures isn't ad­dressed, the rapid de­vel­op­ment of land that once cap­tured rain that now runs in­to drainage sys­tems that were nev­er de­signed to cap­ture and safe­ly route that kind of wa­ter flow.