SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

A trop­i­cal wave overnight on Fri­day and ear­ly yes­ter­day caused street and flash flood­ing in sev­er­al parts of the coun­try,

At 3 pm yes­ter­day, the T&T Met Of­fice is­sued a river­ine flood alert for low ly­ing ar­eas close to the Ca­roni Riv­er. The Met Of­fice said riv­er lev­els were near-thresh­old in some parts, es­pe­cial­ly along the Ca­roni Riv­er Basin and flood­ing was on­go­ing in cer­tain re­gions.

The high tide, ex­pect­ed at 7.15 pm, was ex­pect­ed to im­pede runoff and with some rain­fall ex­pect­ed overnight, so the Ca­roni Riv­er was ex­pect­ed to breach its banks. The Met Of­fice said there is a mod­er­ate risk to pub­lic safe­ty, liveli­hood and prop­er­ty in those ar­eas.

An ad­verse weath­er alert (yel­low lev­el) for both is­lands will re­main in ef­fect un­til 5 pm to­day.

Yes­ter­day’s ear­ly morn­ing rain caused flood­ing in Lime Head Road and Per­se­ver­ance Road, Chase Vil­lage, as trib­u­taries lead­ing to the Chan­de­nagore Riv­er over­flowed their banks. Flash flood­ing was al­so re­port­ed in Freeport and along the South­ern Main Road, Ch­agua­nas.

There were al­so re­ports of flood­ing along the To­co Main Road, near Ve­ga De Oropouche, from around 3.40 pm. In south Trinidad, parts of Bar­rack­pore, Pe­nal and Debe were un­der­wa­ter.

There were al­so re­ports of flood­ing in Ca­paro and along the East-West Cor­ri­dor in Va­len­cia and Mt Lam­bert. Trees were re­port­ed­ly downed along the North Coast Road.

Two men were strand­ed af­ter the bank of the Matu­ra riv­er broke. A res­cue team was de­ployed and the men were tak­en to the San­gre Grande hos­pi­tal where they were treat­ed.

A trop­i­cal wave is ex­pect­ed to bring heavy rain­fall to­mor­row in­to Tues­day.