Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Far­ley Au­gus­tine this af­ter­noon urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to pay at­ten­tion to me­dia re­ports to learn if schools will be opened to­mor­row, and if pub­lic of­fi­cers will be re­quired to re­port for work as usu­al - fol­low­ing to­day's in­clement weath­er.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing around 5 pm to­day, Au­gus­tine along with a team of of­fi­cials in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) and the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vices (TTMS) pro­vid­ed a sum­ma­ry of ad­verse events that had oc­curred on the is­land.

Homes, busi­ness­es and schools in Scar­bor­ough as well as the Port Au­thor­i­ty's head of­fice was in­un­dat­ed with sev­er­al feet of flood wa­ters by mid­day - which saw stu­dents be­ing dis­missed ear­ly and work­ers al­so be­ing al­lowed to leave ear­ly to get home.

And as res­i­dents and own­ers bat­tled to keep ris­ing wa­ters out, they were al­so forced to con­tend with black-outs and in some cas­es - land­slips which, while they did not ren­der roads im­pass­able, did pose a threat to some homes.

With at least 57 per cent of re­ports out­lin­ing land­slips/land­slides around the is­land as up to 5 pm to­day, Au­gus­tine said high tides and the ex­pect­ed spring tide for to­mor­row, would al­so af­fect just how quick­ly run-off will oc­cur.

Pe­rus­ing a river­ine flood alert is­sued around 5 pm, he warned that all ma­jor wa­ter-cours­es in both Trinidad and To­ba­go were near­ing ca­pac­i­ty lev­els, and as such, he urged res­i­dents to con­tin­ue tak­ing pre­cau­tions to se­cure life and prop­er­ty.

Ral­ly­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans who had rushed to help each oth­er dur­ing the day, he thanked them for ef­fec­tive­ly be­ing first re­spon­ders.

As­sur­ing his coun­try­men that re­sources and equip­ment had been de­ployed to sev­er­al ar­eas to help with clean-up op­er­a­tions and to re­store elec­tric­i­ty, Au­gus­tine urged every one to re­main safe and calm as the au­thor­i­ties were present and would be out dur­ing the night to en­sure a sense of nor­mal­cy was re­stored as much as pos­si­ble.

He al­so ad­vised per­sons to stay off the roads where pos­si­ble.

A TTMS of­fi­cial con­firmed that up to 2 pm to­day, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 83 mm of rain­fall had been record­ed at Crowne Point, which he ad­mit­ted was quite a lot.