Michelle Loubon

Heavy rain­fall wreaked hav­oc in north Trinidad yes­ter­day, leav­ing a trail of de­struc­tion-a $2 mil­lion wall in Mar­aval col­lapsed, a child was re­port­ed­ly trapped in a house at Pow­der Mag­a­zine, Co­corite, while there was flood­ing and grid­lock in oth­er ar­eas. Up to last night, com­mu­ni­ties like Mar­aval, La Sei­va, Co­corite, St James, Dun­don­ald Hill and Wood­brook were still un­der wa­ter. Res­i­dents were still en­gaged in mop­ping up op­er­a­tions with the as­sis­tance of Cepep crews. A mas­sive traf­fic grid­lock en­sued. Com­muters and shop­pers at West­mall were left strand­ed for hours. Res­i­dents wait­ing in vain for the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment to re­spond and res­cue the child trapped in the house were forced to use cut­lass­es to cut the branch­es and trunk of the tree them­selves to free the child.

Dur­ing the del­uge, a land­slide caused Belle View res­i­dent Wil­fred Alexan­der's kitchen to cave in. He es­ti­mat­ed the dam­age around $45,000. Ames Dou­glas said the shops were flood­ed at Shoppes of Mar­aval, but they had cleaned it up. Sob­bing, Git­tens Av­enue, Mar­aval res­i­dent Na­tal­ie Luz said she had re­cent­ly moved in­to her apart­ment and had lost all her pos­ses­sions. Amid the may­hem, peo­ple took time to cap­ture the im­ages on their cell­phone cam­eras.

$2M to re­pair Mar­aval wall

Ar­riv­ing on the scene at Mar­aval, Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jack Warn­er said it will cost about $2 mil­lion to fix the wall that fell at Trinidad Coun­try Club. Warn­er said: "It would cost about $2 mil­lion dol­lars to fix here. Ba­si­cal­ly, just the front wall it­self would cost about $1.5 mil­lion." When asked who con­struct­ed the wall, Pure Di­rec­tor Hay­den Phillip said: "I don't want to give that part of the sto­ry. The sto­ry is what is hap­pen­ing here. If you want to get a good sto­ry come and see what is hap­pen­ing here. Who built the wall is not the sto­ry."

When asked a sec­ond time, he main­tained he was un­in­ter­est­ed in that as­pect of the sto­ry. "The sto­ry was not about who built the wall" but about the de­struc­tion met­ed out to cit­i­zens, he in­di­cat­ed. The wall, Sun­day Guardian re­search un­earthed, was con­struct­ed dur­ing the first phase of the Mar­aval project by Seereer­am Broth­ers. The en­tire project had cost of $13.6 mil­lion. On May 12, the PM along with Warn­er of­fi­cial­ly opened the Mar­aval round­about-part of the Mar­aval project which was ini­ti­at­ed by PNM MP Colm Im­bert to al­le­vi­ate traf­fic woes in the area.

'Wall saved oth­er prop­er­ties'

Mean­while, Phillip said the fall­en wall vir­tu­al­ly saved all the prop­er­ties over the road. He said: "You have a six foot drain and all the de­vel­op­ment go­ing on. You have thou­sands of hous­es on the hill. Peo­ple have no re­gard for Town and Coun­try Plan­ning. You have the foun­da­tion wall which is the re­tain­ing wall. The block wall failed through­out. Thank God the wa­ter went in­to Coun­try Club and most of these prop­er­ties are still in­tact here." In the back­ground, wa­ter trucks and per­son­nel were busy clean­ing up the streets coat­ed with slush, de­bris, bro­ken tree trunks and blocks.

Warn­er blames '80s de­vel­op­ers

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the de­vel­op­ers, Warn­er added: "The de­vel­op­ers we have these days have not been de­vel­op­ing and tak­ing care of their ex­cess wa­ter and the drainage. The sys­tem we have here to­day was a sys­tem that was here in the 80s. I would blame the de­vel­op­ers." Mean­while, Warn­er boast­ed they had got­ten equip­ment and crews to the site. "On Mon­day, we shall be­gin to re­build the wall," said Warn­er. "Again, we shall dredge the rivers again un­til we have prop­er plan­ning." He even promised to meet with Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie. In typ­i­cal fash­ion, Warn­er said: " It is un­for­tu­nate. It is one of those rare events."

Help for cit­i­zens

Warn­er said Gov­ern­ment was ready and will­ing to as­sist af­fect­ed cit­i­zens with grants of $15, 000, $25,000 and even more. He said: "There are peo­ple in need. It will be done quick­ly. I am go­ing to Co­corite and La Sei­va."

'Noth­ing un­usu­al about the rain­fall'

What the metro­log­i­cal of­fice has de­scribed as "usu­al" weath­er pat­terns, has left a trail of de­struc­tion in north Trinidad. An of­fi­cial yes­ter­day ex­plained: "There was noth­ing un­usu­al about the rain­fall, one of the pos­si­ble rea­sons for the flash flood­ing was that it was quite pos­si­ble that high tide was com­ing in and the wa­ter had nowhere to go. "The weath­er pat­tern was not un­usu­al, it is com­mon for this time of the year. "What we had was a up­per lev­el trough that was en­hanc­ing the con­vec­tive ac­tiv­i­ty, that is what caused the clouds to build rapid­ly and was re­spon­si­ble for the amount of pre­cip­i­ta­tion."