There wasn’t time to spare when Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen em­barked on a flood mit­i­ga­tion cam­paign last week.

With­in days of the launch of that na­tion­wide ini­tia­tive, the ef­fects of an In­tertrop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone brought tor­ren­tial rains and flash floods.

Min­is­ter Ameen’s at­tempt to be proac­tive with flood pre­ven­tion by de­ploy­ing equip­ment and man­pow­er to clear drains and wa­ter­cours­es, didn’t take place soon enough to spare the com­mu­ni­ties the ef­fects of 36 hours of rain­fall through­out the week­end.

Up un­til yes­ter­day, the threat re­mained for res­i­dents in low-ly­ing ar­eas near the Ca­roni, North Oropouche, Cunu­pia, South Oropouche, Guaracara and Ca­paro Rivers, where wa­ter lev­els were ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue ris­ing with the se­vere weath­er fore­cast.

High­er than ex­pect­ed rain­fall ac­cu­mu­la­tions left riv­er lev­els above 90 per cent ca­pac­i­ty, while small­er trib­u­taries ex­ceed­ed their ca­pac­i­ties.

The week­end’s del­uge came ahead of the of­fi­cial de­c­la­ra­tion of the rainy sea­son, as well as the height­ened prospects for more se­vere weath­er with the start of the At­lantic Hur­ri­cane Sea­son on June 1.

The Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter has set an ex­am­ple that should be fol­lowed by all the rel­e­vant agen­cies, lo­cal gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties and cit­i­zens: It is bet­ter to be proac­tive rather than re­ac­tive.

That in­cludes Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed, who pre­sides over a bor­ough that ex­pe­ri­enced some of the worst ef­fects of last week­end’s bad weath­er. He was quick to blame the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to in­vest in crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture to mit­i­gate floods.

In­stead of the usu­al po­lit­i­cal tit-for-tat over T&T’s peren­ni­al flood prob­lem, how­ev­er, time and en­er­gy would be bet­ter spent on so­lu­tions to the long­stand­ing and well-known con­trib­u­tors to floods.

There is no time to waste. Me­te­o­rol­o­gists are al­ready mon­i­tor­ing a sys­tem off the coast of Africa that could de­vel­op in­to the first trop­i­cal wave of the year, in­creas­ing the like­li­hood of more se­vere weath­er af­fect­ing T&T by next Sun­day in­to Mon­day.

Point­ing fin­gers at po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents — which the cur­rent and pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions are very adept at do­ing — in no way mit­i­gates flood­ing, which has be­come an in­creas­ing­ly fre­quent and dev­as­tat­ing is­sue in T&T, dis­rupt­ing lives, dam­ag­ing in­fra­struc­ture, and pos­ing se­ri­ous health risks.

How­ev­er, nei­ther the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment nor the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion seems ful­ly pre­pared to ac­knowl­edge that flood­ing is a com­plex prob­lem in­flu­enced by both nat­ur­al and hu­man fac­tors.

Nei­ther par­ty, while in gov­ern­ment, put suf­fi­cient ef­fort in­to mea­sures that ad­dressed is­sues such as de­for­esta­tion, dri­ven by ur­ban ex­pan­sion, and agri­cul­ture that re­duced the land’s abil­i­ty to ab­sorb wa­ter, in­creas­ing sur­face runoff.

There has al­so been an un­will­ing­ness to con­front po­lit­i­cal­ly risky is­sues, such as poor land-use prac­tices, in­clud­ing un­reg­u­lat­ed con­struc­tion, that dis­rupt nat­ur­al drainage sys­tems.

Flood­ing re­quires a mul­ti-faceted ap­proach. Putting more fo­cus on im­proved ur­ban plan­ning, stricter en­vi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions and in­vest­ment in sus­tain­able drainage sys­tems should be the pri­or­i­ty, not the con­stant look­ing back at past fail­ures.

In­stead of the an­nu­al po­lit­i­cal blame game, avail­able re­sources would be bet­ter chan­nelled in­to pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns that en­cour­age re­spon­si­ble waste dis­pos­al and land-use prac­tices.

Flood­ing is a grow­ing cri­sis that de­mands ur­gent at­ten­tion. The rel­e­vant min­istries and agen­cies should in­vest more time in un­der­stand­ing its caus­es and tak­ing de­ci­sive ac­tion to build a more re­silient fu­ture for T&T.