SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Daysie John has over­come many bat­tles in her 75 years.

The pen­sion­er fought and con­quered can­cer three times in four years. She is blind in her left eye and lives alone but still man­ages her dai­ly tasks of cook­ing, wash­ing and clean­ing.

In the last six weeks, John had to muster strength to bury her moth­er and younger broth­er who lived with her at Moolchan Trace, Pe­nal. As she tried to come to terms with the deaths, an even big­ger predica­ment faced her when flood wa­ters in­vad­ed her home on Tues­day fol­low­ing tor­ren­tial rain­fall.

John said she has fought many bat­tles in her life­time but when she saw the vol­ume of wa­ter that had gushed in­to her wood­en house, she knew her life was in dan­ger.

“It was like a sea out­side and the wa­ter was rush­ing in­side the house so quick­ly. It ter­ri­fied me be­cause I live alone and can on­ly see in one eye. I was re­al­ly fright­ened ... scared to be hon­est. I had to run from my house and seek safer ground by a neigh­bour,” she re­called.

John bare­ly had time to save any­thing but a few pieces of cloth­ing.

Still shak­en, she said if she had not act­ed quick­ly, she too might have been gone.

John is one of hun­dreds af­fect­ed by the wide­spread flood­ing in the Pe­nal and Wood­land ar­eas. On Wednes­day, the moth­er of one re­turned to her dwelling feel­ing help­less and hope­less.

“When I came home, I was re­duced to tears to see the de­struc­tion the wa­ter caused. Meh bed mash up. The cup­boards get wa­ter­logged. Every­thing was hel­ter-skel­ter. I tried to bail out the wa­ter I couldn’t make. This is the worst flood I have seen in years,” she said.

Dr Allen Sam­my said in the sev­en years he served as chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PDRC), he es­ti­mat­ed there were 30 floods in the re­gion—10 ma­jor and 20 mi­nor. The ma­jor flood­ing af­fect­ed a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of Pe­nal/Debe.

The re­gion serves 33 com­mu­ni­ties with a pop­u­la­tion of close to 80,000. Sam­my said there were at least 20 mi­nor floods that af­fect­ed “a few thou­sand peo­ple” and he es­ti­mat­ed that res­i­dents and farm­ers suf­fered loss­es of $50 mil­lion dur­ing the sev­en years.

“That is a con­ser­v­a­tive fig­ure,” he said.

Sam­my said cli­mate change has ex­ac­er­bat­ed floods in the coun­try.

“Un­less we start to look at things na­tion­al­ly, we are not go­ing any­where. We will be spin­ning top in mud,” he warned.

The Met Of­fice has ad­vised on its web­site that the like­ly im­pacts of rain­fall are ex­pect­ed from No­vem­ber to Jan­u­ary 2025 with mod­er­ate chances of the usu­al num­ber of wet days (25.0 mm) and a mod­er­ate chance of flood­ing.

Last year, the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice high­light­ed 125 com­mu­ni­ties with the po­ten­tial for flood­ing dur­ing the rainy sea­son.

On Tues­day, the chair­man of PRDC Gow­tam Ma­haraj de­clared the re­gion a dis­as­ter zone. He es­ti­mat­ed that 10,000 house­holds were af­fect­ed by the del­uge but Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi re­fut­ed the fig­ure, stat­ing it was clos­er to 400 flood-af­fect­ed homes.

“If your boots are not filled with wa­ter, you could say or call any fig­ure,” Ma­haraj shot back at Al-Rawi.

“Prob­a­bly where the min­is­ter sits it is much less. But from where I stand in the wa­ter it is much more,” he told the Sun­day Guardian in an in­ter­view on Thurs­day.

Ma­haraj said un­planned de­vel­op­ments, cli­mate change and con­struc­tion of homes on river­banks as con­tribut­ing fac­tors to the flood­ing.

“Now that I am in that chair, en­force­ment will be­gin,” he said.

He es­ti­mat­ed that the dam­age to homes, ve­hi­cles and crops would amount to mil­lions of dol­lars.

“Those res­i­dents have gone through this many times be­fore. It may take a while for them to re­cov­er.”

On Thurs­day, Ma­haraj es­tab­lished a so­cial ser­vices com­mit­tee to as­sist fam­i­lies in dis­tress. The cor­po­ra­tion re­quest­ed $30 mil­lion for ir­ri­ga­tion and drainage de­vel­op­ment in the 2025 bud­get but was al­lo­cat­ed $5 mil­lion.

For years, flood­ing has been a preva­lent and per­sis­tent nat­ur­al haz­ard af­fect­ing Trinidad. It has re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic and so­cial costs to the coun­try, as over the years vic­tims have suf­fered mil­lions of dol­lars in prop­er­ty, ve­hi­cle and crop dam­age.

A 2020 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) re­port on Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture on an In­quiry in­to Flood Al­le­vi­a­tion and Con­trol Mea­sures for Ma­jor Riv­er Basins and Drainage Catch­ments in T&T, chaired by De­oroop Teemal, stat­ed that since 2017 the coun­try has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing heavy rain­fall at greater fre­quen­cy.

The re­port at­trib­uted flood­ing to il­le­gal struc­tures in flood-prone ar­eas but list­ed oth­er fac­tors, in­clud­ing il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, cli­mate change, en­croach­ments on riv­er re­serves, di­ver­sion of wa­ter­cours­es, un­planned de­vel­op­ments, in­ad­e­quate drainage in­fra­struc­ture, de­for­esta­tion, slash-and-burn prac­tices, im­prop­er waste dis­pos­als and over­grown veg­e­ta­tion in wa­ter­cours­es.

The re­port al­so re­vealed that flood and drainage stud­ies con­duct­ed by gov­ern­ments be­tween 2012 and ear­ly 2019 cost $66 mil­lion.

One find­ing in the re­port was that T&T re­quired a com­pre­hen­sive Flood Man­age­ment Act to con­sol­i­date the var­i­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for flood man­age­ment.

“Flood man­age­ment leg­is­la­tion needs to in­clude high penal­ties for breach­es and ad­e­quate re­sources for en­force­ment,” the re­port stat­ed.

It al­so not­ed that cur­rent leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing lit­ter­ing is poor­ly man­aged and en­forced, while drainage in­fra­struc­ture is gen­er­al­ly aged and not sized to ac­com­mo­date heavy rain­fall. Pumps and sluice gate in­fra­struc­ture were deemed ob­so­lete and un­able to with­stand cur­rent rain­fall pat­terns.

The re­port found that high-in­ten­si­ty rain­fall in a short pe­ri­od was like­ly to be­come very fre­quent be­cause of cli­mate change and poor land use prac­tices.

“There is a need for in­ter-agency co­or­di­na­tion to ad­dress the is­sue of flood­ing,” it said.

The re­port al­so stat­ed that stud­ies were need­ed to de­ter­mine the cost of flood­ing and flood al­le­vi­a­tion works which might be gross­ly over­es­ti­mat­ed be­cause of lack of da­ta or poor da­ta.

“Peo­ple will con­tin­ue to be af­fect­ed by flood­ing if, in­ter alia, ap­a­thet­ic at­ti­tudes to­wards flood­ing, poor land use prac­tices and lack of en­force­ment con­tin­ue to pre­vail,” the re­port said.

An­oth­er find­ing was that min­istries re­spon­si­ble for flood al­le­vi­a­tion and con­trol have been un­der­staffed.

Gov­ern­ments past and present have spent hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to mit­i­gate flood­ing through stud­ies and in­fra­struc­tur­al works.

Be­tween 2018 and 2022, the gov­ern­ment in­ject­ed $636.8 mil­lion to im­prove drainage in­fra­struc­ture and re­duce the im­pacts of flood­ing, ac­cord­ing to the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) doc­u­ments.

For this fis­cal year, PSIP doc­u­ments showed that $126 mil­lion will be spent on wa­ter man­age­ment, flood con­trol and mit­i­ga­tion, in­clud­ing up­grades to ex­ist­ing pumps and sluice gate in­ven­to­ry. Con­struc­tion and re­pair of box drains were al­so iden­ti­fied.

But even be­fore 2017, cit­i­zens felt the wrath of storms such as Ivan, He­lene, Tomas and Matthew. Dozens of com­mu­ni­ties were se­vere­ly im­pact­ed when Bret made land­fall in 2017.

In Oc­to­ber 2018, com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad ex­pe­ri­enced one of the worst floods in decades which af­fect­ed 150,000 peo­ple and 4,100 house­holds. The trail of de­struc­tion left be­hind by the rag­ing wa­ters prompt­ed the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide $30 mil­lion in grants to those ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed.

The fol­low­ing year, trop­i­cal storm Karen un­leashed its fury caus­ing many homes and farms to suf­fer loss­es.

Per­sis­tent rain­fall in De­cem­ber of 2022 al­so trig­gered mas­sive flood­ing which led the Gov­ern­ment to al­lo­cate $50 mil­lion in flood re­lief to farm­ers and cit­i­zens af­fect­ed by the nat­ur­al dis­as­ter.