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Monday, January 20, 2025

Communication transmitters at risk after landslide

by

Charles Kong Soo
1248 days ago
20210821
The landslide blocking the road to Cumberland Hill where several communication transmitters are located.

The landslide blocking the road to Cumberland Hill where several communication transmitters are located.

Charles Kong Soo

There is con­cern over the state of com­mu­ni­ca­tion trans­mit­ters lo­cat­ed at Cum­ber­land Hill af­ter a huge land­slide blocked ac­cess to the site where they are lo­cat­ed last week. With the road cur­rent­ly im­pass­able, op­er­a­tors of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and me­dia en­ti­ties that re­ly on the trans­mit­ters are con­cerned that the on­ly way to the lo­ca­tion is by air which will pose se­ri­ous prob­lems with trans­port­ing equip­ment for emer­gency re­pairs or to pow­er gen­er­a­tors.

Di­rec­tor of the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA) Ki­ran Ma­haraj said Cum­ber­land Hill had been ful­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ing for years but be­came im­pass­able last week due to a land­slide caused by heavy rain­fall.

“This is un­for­tu­nate as the ma­jor­i­ty of the coun­try’s elec­tron­ic me­dia re­side at the hill, in ad­di­tion to the trans­mit­ters for di­vi­sions of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, T&T Coast Guard, T&T Fire Ser­vices, am­bu­lance ser­vices, com­mu­ni­ca­tion to oil plat­forms, as well as TSTT and Dig­i­cel,” she said.

“We are look­ing at a sit­u­a­tion where the coun­try’s ma­jor com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems are in jeop­ardy. Part of the road is bro­ken, ve­hi­cles can­not tra­verse that road.”

Ma­haraj said if there is a pow­er out­age, the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply to the site can­not be re­stored im­me­di­ate­ly as T&TEC crews will not be able to get there. The gen­er­a­tors for the trans­mit­ters might op­er­ate for two or three days but will go down if diesel fu­el or equip­ment doesn’t get there on time, even by he­li­copter.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said per­son­nel from the min­istry’s en­gi­neer­ing de­part­ment hope to com­plete an as­sess­ment by to­mor­row. Of­fi­cials from the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit of the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, who were busy with flood cleanups said they were un­able to as­sist.

Ma­haraj said the TTP­BA has made an ur­gent ap­peal for as­sis­tance to the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and is spear­head­ing ef­forts for the restora­tion of Cum­ber­land Hill.

She said the group got as­sis­tance from Sinanan for an en­gi­neer­ing study in 2018-2019. How­ev­er, the sec­ond stage of that project was nev­er com­plet­ed. The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad & To­ba­go (TATT) took on the project but to date, noth­ing has hap­pened, so the TTP­BA got in­volved.

Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Symon de No­bri­ga and mem­bers of his tech­ni­cal staff made a site vis­it to Cum­ber­land Hill yes­ter­day to check on trans­mit­ter fa­cil­i­ties op­er­at­ed by state-owned Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT) and to dis­cuss the in­fra­struc­ture in place.


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