Last week's trop­i­cal wave known as In­vest 91L brought with it thun­der­storms, strong winds, light­ning, land­slides and flood­ing which re­sult­ed in one of the worst del­uges in Trinidad and To­ba­go in re­cent years.

Peo­ple's prop­er­ties were dam­aged, cars were swept away and at least one life was lost in Lopinot when Tere­sa Lynch was swept away by flood­wa­ters on Wednes­day. Her body was found on Fri­day, leav­ing her fam­i­ly in heartache and pain.

Thou­sands of cit­i­zens have been left dis­tressed and count­ing their loss­es in the af­ter­math. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars have al­ready been spent on clean-up ef­forts by the au­thor­i­ties and that fig­ure could run in­to mil­lions of dol­lars af­ter the op­er­a­tions are com­plet­ed.

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi, in a brief mes­sage, said that his min­istry was still in the mid­dle of clean-up ex­er­cis­es and he could not give a cost. Last Thurs­day at a me­dia brief­ing, he said he re­ceived 145 re­ports of flood­ing and 30 re­ports of land­slides.

The Sun­day Guardian called the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment's (ODPM) CEO Ma­jor Gen­er­al Rod­ney Smart but he did not re­ply.

Chair­men from sev­er­al re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions were in­volved in clean-up ex­er­cis­es as they worked vig­or­ous­ly to re­turn their re­gions to pre-flood con­di­tions.

Chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Kwasi Robin­son said the clean up could cost his cor­po­ra­tion at least half a mil­lion dol­lars.

“The cost will be hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars, just un­der $500,000. It has in­volved the mov­ing around of re­sources like clean-up days with con­trac­tors. We got sup­port from oth­er re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. Then we got sup­port from the T&T De­fence Force. Now, we’re mov­ing in­to get­ting trucks like wa­ter trucks, back­hoes, cater­ing for work­ers work­ing night shifts and clean­ing sup­plies. I would say hun­dreds of peo­ple were af­fect­ed."

He said in the ini­tial days they had land­slides in Aripo and Mara­cas Val­ley and the El Do­ra­do area, and they are work­ing to bring the ar­eas back to some lev­el of nor­mal­cy.

“There is a lot of work to be done and we ex­pect to have ex­tra re­sources in the com­ing days. There was the life that was lost in Sur­rey Vil­lage. We had se­vere prop­er­ty dam­age in the Trinci­ty area. There was sig­nif­i­cant flood­ing in the Ca­roni area.”

Gowrie Roop­nar­ine, chair­man of the Princes Town Cor­po­ra­tion said that al­though there was no ma­jor flood­ing in his area, there were land­slides and some roads have been af­fect­ed af­ter the heavy rains.

He said the costs to re­pair these would range be­tween $250,000 to $300,000.

“While we had floods it was not ma­jor where res­i­dents lost or got their hous­es dam­aged. The prob­lems we have had over the last few days were land­slides be­cause of the heavy rains. The Sis­ters Road, which is a Con­nec­tor Road from Tabaquite to Williamsville, that road was cut away clean from land­slips,” Roop­nar­ine said.

Ari­ma May­or Cagney Casimire, mean­while, told the Sun­day Guardian in a What­sApp mes­sage that Ari­ma was “bad­ly hit” in last week’s floods.

He es­ti­mates that un­der­tak­ing works af­ter land­slides would cost the Ari­ma Cor­po­ra­tion $200,000.

“This is for land­slips, mov­ing the walls and clean­ing up and this will be for three teams for ten days, in­clud­ing back­hoes and trucks. We had land­slips, the bound­ary walls of four hous­es which were de­stroyed fell in­to a drain, hous­es flood­ed in­clud­ing a church and kinder­garten and more wa­ter than be­fore. The earth is sat­u­rat­ed so we can ex­pect quick, heav­ier runoff.”

A family look out of their home sorrounded by floodwaters on Leemond Road, North Orpouche, via Sangre Grande, on Thursday.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Mean­while, the chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Anil Juter­am said he did not want to give an es­ti­mate of how much the clean-up ex­er­cis­es cost, but gave a break­down of the ar­eas that ex­pe­ri­enced floods.

“We have 95 per cent com­plet­ed the works to as­sess the dam­ages, then we will be able to sup­ply mat­tress­es, dis­in­fec­tant and oth­er things to the peo­ple af­fect­ed. In terms of flood­ing, some of the af­fect­ed ar­eas were Leemond Vil­lage, Fish­ing Pond, Ve­ga de Oropouche, Mela­jo Vil­lage, San­gre Chiq­ui­to and Pic­ton Road. There were al­so land­slips like Mis­sion Vil­lage in To­co and al­so the Road to Matelot, there were five land slip­pages.

“So far, about 75 hous­es were im­pact­ed by the floods. We’re us­ing our in-house re­sources to do the clean-up. We would not at this point put a price tag on that as it comes as part of the every­day work of the cor­po­ra­tion.”

How­ev­er, MP for the To­co/San­gre Grande con­stituen­cy Roger Mon­roe es­ti­mates that the con­stituen­cy will spend “a cou­ple hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars” on clean-up ex­er­cis­es.

“This will cov­er ren­o­va­tions to hous­es and sup­ply­ing oth­er as­sis­tance. There was flood­ing and land­slips in this con­stituen­cy. That clean up is on­go­ing and should be com­plet­ed this week­end. The flood­ing was wide­spread.

“So at North East­ern Col­lege, the Guaico Gov­ern­ment High, and the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal there was more flash flood­ing. We saw more wa­ter than usu­al this year. I would es­ti­mate that 35 hous­es were af­fect­ed. We had land­slips and dam­age to a bridge in Ba­lan­dra.”

Chair­man of the Coa­va/Tabaquite Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Hen­ry Awong said in a What­sApp mes­sage that the re­gion was not bad­ly hit.

“We got some flood­ing which af­fect­ed homes in the Las Lo­mas area which in­cludes Mon Plaisir Rd and Sa­roop Av­enue. Our Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit is out­side as­sist­ing with mop­ping up and do­ing the nec­es­sary as­sess­ment.”

Forde: Peo­ple build­ing where they are not sup­posed to

MP for Tu­na­puna Es­mond Forde, who spoke to the me­dia at a walk­a­bout in his con­stituen­cy yes­ter­day, said that peo­ple are build­ing in ar­eas that they should not be build­ing in and this on­ly cre­ates more prob­lems when it rains.

"One, we can def­i­nite­ly talk about cli­mate change. Two, a lot of in­di­vid­u­als are go­ing to the el­e­vat­ed ar­eas at the back of Tu­na­puna and I pre­sume in oth­er ar­eas. I don't know if they are get­ting Town and Coun­try ap­proval, I don't know if they are get­ting the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion’s ap­proval, but a lot of per­sons are build­ing on the up­per hilly ar­eas of Tu­na­puna and when you check there is no gut­ter­ing, there are no drains, there is noth­ing hap­pen­ing. So what hap­pens when that wa­ter falls on the earth? Even­tu­al­ly, over time, over years it will give way."

He gave ex­am­ples of ar­eas like Gold­en view in El Do­ra­do Heights, Tay­lor Street, St Ce­cil­ia Road that do not usu­al­ly flood but were un­der flood­wa­ters last week.

"I think we need to en­sure that, even though I am part of the Gov­ern­ment, that Town and Coun­try and the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions play their role in not giv­ing peo­ple per­mis­sion to build at a cer­tain el­e­va­tion be­cause it is cre­at­ing a degra­da­tion of the soil, ero­sion and every­thing."

Met Of­fice up­date for to­day–Part­ly cloudy con­di­tions with oc­ca­sion­al show­ers

Ac­cord­ing to the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Of­fice’s last up­date yes­ter­day evening, last night was ex­pect­ed to be a part­ly cloudy night with a few show­ers and a low chance (30 per cent) of an iso­lat­ed thun­der­storm. To­day will be part­ly cloudy con­di­tions with oc­ca­sion­al show­ers and a medi­um chance (60 per cent) of a few heavy show­ers/thun­der­storms favour­ing the af­ter­noon/evening.