Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go is said to be well-pre­pared for the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Beryl, which is ex­pect­ed to pass to the north of the is­land tonight in­to to­mor­row morn­ing. The is­land is un­der a Trop­i­cal Storm Warn­ing.

As the sit­u­a­tion de­vel­oped yes­ter­day, sev­er­al stake­hold­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in a high-lev­el meet­ing chaired by Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

Among the at­ten­dees were the Po­lice Ser­vice, Fire Ser­vice, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions providers, WASA, T&TEC, the Port Au­thor­i­ty, TEMA (To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency), and mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Ad­dress­ing a vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the meet­ing, Au­gus­tine itemised the lev­el of pre­pared­ness of each stake­hold­er.

He said T&TEC had strate­gi­cal­ly placed stand­by gen­er­a­tors in some ar­eas, “and those portable gen­er­a­tors are ac­tu­al­ly fu­elled up and ready to pro­vide lim­it­ed elec­tric­i­ty ac­cess to some dis­tricts should elec­tric­i­ty go in those ar­eas.”

He said Dig­i­cel, TSTT, and Flow in­di­cat­ed that their cell site gen­er­a­tors were fu­elled up to main­tain ser­vice should pow­er be lost. They have al­so added two more emer­gency num­bers in ad­di­tion to 211–they are 866-4211 and 266-8485.

As it per­tains to WASA, the au­thor­i­ty has as­sured that once they had pow­er, they would be able to pro­vide a wa­ter sup­ply.

“But one ought to ex­pect that if we have wors­ened con­di­tions, then wa­ter sources will be a chal­lenge, so you may need to store wa­ter at home,” he said.

He added that the Com­mu­ni­ty Emer­gency Re­sponse Team (CERT) was ready to re­spond to any even­tu­al­i­ty.

The Chief Sec­re­tary said while flights on the air­bridge and sail­ings of the fer­ries would con­tin­ue as planned, po­ten­tial trav­ellers should con­stant­ly mon­i­tor the rel­e­vant web­sites so they can be in­formed prompt­ly of any changes.

Au­gus­tine, how­ev­er, made a plea to fish­er­men. “Pull up your boat, take a rope, take what­ev­er, and pull up your boat.”

In the event of any phys­i­cal harm to in­di­vid­u­als, Au­gus­tine said the TRHA (To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty) was ready.

“There will be con­ti­nu­ity of ser­vice where the TRHA is con­cerned. They have checked at all of their op­er­a­tions, and at all of the op­er­a­tions, all of their health posts, they have work­ing gen­er­a­tors, all filled to ca­pac­i­ty, so elec­tric­i­ty is there, and their emer­gency kits are all pre­pared, ready, and filled,” he said.

He said stag­ing of equip­ment would take place in ar­eas prone to flood­ing and land­slides so that they could be re­spond­ed to quick­ly if need be.

The in­ter­nal elec­tions of the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty sched­uled for to­day have been post­poned to next Sun­day.

“That is be­cause I will need all mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to be fo­cused on THA busi­ness to­mor­row; this is our pri­or­i­ty,” he ex­plained.

How­ev­er, the THA has not can­celled any of the so­cial events tak­ing place around the is­land to­day. He on­ly urged peo­ple to take pre­cau­tions and be safe.

“I am just ask­ing that you re­main cau­tious through­out your ac­tiv­i­ties and be pre­pared to get home as soon as those ac­tiv­i­ties come to an end.”

The Chief Sec­re­tary said they were prepar­ing for the worst but pray­ing for the best, but he asked the pub­lic not to pan­ic.

He said lat­er to­day, the THA would re­veal whether schools and pub­lic of­fices would be closed on Mon­day.