“When­ev­er the ODPM (Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment) gets in­volved at the na­tion­al lev­el it says that some­thing se­ri­ous may be hap­pen­ing, and there­fore the fact that the ODPM is here to­day at this press con­fer­ence is an in­di­ca­tion of how se­ri­ous we need to take the warn­ings, the alerts that we have been get­ting from the Met Of­fice.”

ODPM CEO Rod­ney Smart made the point as he sat flanked by the Min­is­ters of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Works and Trans­port, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty/Pub­lic Util­i­ties and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

The min­is­ters are now part of a high-lev­el team ap­point­ed by the Cab­i­net to treat with two weath­er-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties cur­rent­ly fac­ing or ap­proach­ing the coun­try.

There was a yel­low lev­el alert which start­ed on Sun­day morn­ing but that was dis­con­tin­ued yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

How­ev­er, a strong trop­i­cal wave in the At­lantic Ocean and ac­tiv­i­ty off the coast of Africa have cap­tured the at­ten­tion of the Gov­ern­ment.

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi said the gov­ern­ment is tak­ing the mat­ter se­ri­ous­ly.

“The Prime Min­is­ter him­self, as of last night trig­gered full ac­tiv­i­ty from Cal­i­for­nia, the act­ing Prime Min­is­ter the Ho­n­ourable Colm Im­bert held a meet­ing of all min­is­ters this morn­ing (Sun­day) in this team,” Al-Rawi ex­plained.

In ad­di­tion, he said a dis­as­ter meet­ing took place yes­ter­day morn­ing with all the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

“It is crit­i­cal that we take ad­van­tage of prepa­ra­tion. Why prepa­ra­tion? With three sys­tems com­ing po­ten­tial­ly back-to-back we on­ly have one op­por­tu­ni­ty to pre­pare,” Al-Rawi said.

He said they have since sent all cor­po­ra­tions out to do a base­line analy­sis to phys­i­cal­ly en­sure the state and con­di­tions of usu­al lo­ca­tions of flood­ing and land­slides.

Al-Rawi al­so said that, “It is im­per­a­tive that farm­ers and cit­i­zens that live in low ly­ing ar­eas ac­cept the re­al­i­ty that with heavy rain­fall there may be flood­ing is­sues.”

He as­sured that sand­bags and sand­pits are avail­able as well as tree cut­ting was be­ing done.

“We must al­ways pre­pare for the worst and pray for the best and ex­pect the best,” Al-Rawi added.

As it re­lates to pub­lic util­i­ties, Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les as­sured that all util­i­ty com­pa­nies are “on high alert” to give sup­port to oth­er state agen­cies.

As act­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, Gon­za­les said he had been in­formed by the ODPM that the Na­tion­al Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NEOC), which in­cludes the Po­lice Ser­vice, Fire Ser­vice, De­fence Force, all util­i­ty com­pa­nies, Min­istry of Health and SWM­COL is ful­ly ac­ti­vat­ed.

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan in­di­cat­ed that a de­silt­ing pro­gramme had com­menced in Jan­u­ary and wa­ter lev­els in rivers had been man­aged well in the wake of re­cent heavy rain.

“So far we have been able to cope with it, how­ev­er, what we are see­ing on the hori­zon com­ing to us is a lot more down­pour over the next cou­ple of days and in the next week,” he added.

Sinanan said they will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor as well as de­silt.

In ad­di­tion, he said they “have pumps at all our sites, work­ing pumps. We do have peo­ple on the ground mon­i­tor­ing these pumps to en­sure that once they have to be ac­ti­vat­ed they will be ac­ti­vat­ed.”

In the event of pos­si­ble land­slides, Min­is­ter Sinanan said they are be­ing proac­tive.

“We al­so have equip­ment placed at dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions so in the event of a land­slip or so it will not take too long to have equip­ment on the ground and to have it cleared.”

He said, for ex­am­ple, they have al­ready sent some equip­ment to the North Coast.

“We are quite pre­pared to han­dle the dis­as­ter in the event of any dis­as­ter that may oc­cur with­in the com­ing days,” Sinanan as­sured.

But while the Gov­ern­ment said it is ful­ly pre­pared for any even­tu­al­i­ties, there is not yet any plan to keep peo­ple at home or off the roads.

Min­is­ter Al-Rawi said while pri­vate busi­ness­es can do as they see fit, but, “the gov­ern­ment is not mak­ing any spe­cif­ic rec­om­men­da­tion in that re­gard.”

In terms of schools, chil­dren will be re­quired to at­tend.

“School is on, all things re­main­ing equal,” Al-Rawi said.

DIS­AS­TER MAN­AGE­MENT UNIT – HOT­LINE NUM­BERS

Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion 800-2ABC (2222)

Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion 800- DCBC (3222)

Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion 800 - CTTC (2882)

Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion 800 - DM­RC (3672)

Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion 800 - PDRC (7372)

Point Fortin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion 800 - PF­BC (7322)

Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion 800 - PTRC (7872)

Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion 800- PSCC (7722)

San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion 800 - SC­DU (7238)

San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion 800 - SGRC (7472)

San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion 800 - SLRC (7572)

Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion 800 - 4SRC (4772)

Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion 800 - 4MRC (4672)

Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion 800 - TPRC (8772)

To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency - 211