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Monday, March 17, 2025

Citizens counting losses after heavy rains, floods

...corporations spending hundreds of thousands to clean up

by

Raphael John-lall
891 days ago
20221009
Regional Corporation and CEPEP workers clean up the Tunapuna area yesterday.

Regional Corporation and CEPEP workers clean up the Tunapuna area yesterday.

Tunapuna MP Esmond Forde's Facebook page

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.

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.

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