Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

As com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ued to be dev­as­tat­ed by Thurs­day’s flood­ing, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen was ini­tial­ly con­cerned that there may have been a loss of life and se­ri­ous in­jury at Trantrill Road, St Au­gus­tine, but all miss­ing peo­ple were even­tu­al­ly ac­count­ed for.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, Guardian Me­dia ob­tained footage of ve­hi­cles sub­merged in wa­ter in the area.

And be­fore en­ter­ing Par­lia­ment con­vened yes­ter­day, Ameen con­firmed the pos­si­ble se­ri­ous­ness of the in­ci­dent.

“Right now, we are deal­ing with an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion where sev­er­al ve­hi­cles at­tempt­ed to dri­ve on Trantrill Road and they are now in the flood­wa­ter off the road­way. It is a se­ri­ous cause for con­cern be­cause while some of the dri­vers have been res­cued, there are oth­ers who we are not sure whether they were able to es­cape, or if they are, in fact, still in the flood­wa­ter. So the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vices, who have been work­ing with the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions in oth­er sit­u­a­tions, have now de­ployed re­sources there. We have just asked for the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion’s Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice to pro­vide es­cort for ad­di­tion­al ve­hi­cles to go up there with equip­ment and so on … We are treat­ing this sit­u­a­tion as ur­gent.

“We want to re­it­er­ate, please do not take the chance and dri­ve through the flood­wa­ters, you could nev­er tell how heavy the cur­rent is or what the sit­u­a­tion is, that you can­not see. There are al­ter­na­tive routes, and there are al­ter­na­tive routes in Trantrill Road. It’s not a sit­u­a­tion where there is on­ly one route. So we are re­mind­ing the pub­lic to please ex­er­cise safe­ty,” the St Au­gus­tine MP said.

A sub­se­quent re­lease from the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry con­firmed that two peo­ple were safe­ly res­cued by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vices in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kalpoos Bird Sanc­tu­ary Ibis Tours.

“Ef­forts con­tin­ue to lo­cate the own­er of a third ve­hi­cle, which was found un­at­tend­ed in the flood­ed area.”

It was lat­er con­firmed by Min­is­ter Ameen that the fi­nal miss­ing per­son, Zhaenkun Yan, was found in good health.

Mean­while, Ameen said the wa­ter con­tin­ued to rise at the Ca­roni Riv­er Basin, as of mid-af­ter­noon yes­ter­day.

‘Dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing’

The Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ca­roni East, Rishad Seecha­ran, said the con­stituen­cy ex­pe­ri­enced “dev­as­tat­ing” flood­ing.

“We have ex­ten­sive flood­ing in the Madras Road area, parts of St He­le­na, Con­stan­tine Trace, and the usu­al ar­eas, as well as flood­ing from the Cunu­pia Riv­er. The ex­ten­sive flood­ing is in the St He­le­na, Car­men area. I plan to be on the field all of to­mor­row (Sat­ur­day), try­ing to be with the con­stituents, try­ing to dis­perse aid. It is un­for­tu­nate, that such ex­ten­sive flood­ing has hap­pened. I passed the Ca­roni on the way here to­day and the wa­ter lev­els are ex­treme­ly high, prob­a­bly one of the high­est I’ve ever seen it.

“We have to be vig­i­lant go­ing for­ward. We had a case where one CXC stu­dent in Pe­tersville, off of Chin Chin was un­able to write her ex­ams yes­ter­day morn­ing at 9. She couldn’t get out of her home with her par­ents, so we will have to look in­to that, to see if any pro­vi­sions can be made for her and oth­ers that may have ex­pe­ri­enced that. Some of the el­der­ly and the sick are ma­rooned in their homes. It’s in the dozens, most­ly around the river­bank in the St He­le­na area. We have reached out to the army and the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions,” he said.