Jesse Ramdeo

A mis­sion dubbed “Mon­day Nor­mal­cy” is now un­der way to re­store op­er­a­tions in To­ba­go af­fect­ed by re­cent ad­verse weath­er to nor­mal­cy.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said on Fri­day that a to­tal of 37 peo­ple had been dis­placed as a re­sult of dev­as­ta­tion caused by the pas­sage of a strong trop­i­cal wave ear­li­er this week.

Speak­ing dur­ing a press brief­ing yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine said, ”We have ten dis­placed fam­i­lies, ten fam­i­lies that we have had to treat with and that is 37 peo­ple in to­tal.”

Au­gus­tine said in the midst of the may­hem, To­ba­go was grant­ed small mer­cies that Trinidad was in need of.

Au­gus­tine said, “We should col­lec­tive­ly thank God that no one lost their lives in this ex­pe­ri­ence, so we thank God for that and we pray for the fam­i­ly as one life was lost in Trinidad.”

Au­gus­tine said a sub-com­mit­tee had been es­tab­lished to over­see ac­com­mo­da­tion and as­sis­tance to the im­pact­ed fam­i­lies.

“When it comes to re­spond­ing to the fam­i­lies in need, en­sur­ing that those ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed are moved, that their rent is cov­ered un­til we can clean up and or­gan­ise the per­ma­nent liv­ing arrange­ments, that where school uni­forms are lost, books are de­stroyed, they are re­placed in the short­est pos­si­ble time,” he said.

He, how­ev­er, not­ed that the scale of dam­age on the is­land re­mained daunt­ing and that the top five im­pact­ed vil­lages were Ma­son Hall, Ply­mouth, Mo­ri­ah, Belle Gar­den and Gold­en Lane.

Au­gus­tine not­ed, ”Three hun­dred and twen­ty-six re­ports that we have re­ceived and fifty per cent of those re­ports are land­slide re­lat­ed, that is about 162 re­port­ed land­slides, 16 per cent flood re­lat­ed, 12 per cent tree re­lat­ed. We had 26 blocked road­ways.”

The Chief Sec­re­tary said the de­struc­tion ex­posed poor build­ing codes on the is­land, adding change was need­ed if res­i­dents were to weath­er fu­ture ad­verse con­di­tions.

“It is ev­i­dent that prop­er spa­tial plan­ning is not hap­pen­ing in our com­mu­ni­ties, so peo­ple just build and some­times peo­ple build out, most times we build with­out en­gi­neer­ing and ex­pert ad­vice and so in mo­ments like this, what we see hap­pen­ing is in­evitable,” he added.

Au­gus­tine said with 90 per cent of schools al­so tak­ing a pound­ing, teams were work­ing around the clock to re­turn op­er­a­tions on the is­land to nor­mal by Mon­day.

The Chief Sec­re­tary said at the mo­ment, it was dif­fi­cult to as­cer­tain the to­tal cost of dam­age in­curred by the in­clement weath­er for To­ba­go.