KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Units spent most of yes­ter­day in com­mu­ni­ties, as the pass­ing In­vest #91L Trop­i­cal Wave left res­i­dents in parts of East and Cen­tral Trinidad grap­pling with floods and struc­tur­al dam­age.

At 1.51 pm yes­ter­day, the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice is­sued an up­date to its Ad­verse Weath­er Alert, say­ing that the Yel­low Lev­el ad­vi­so­ry will re­main in ef­fect un­til to­mor­row at noon.

De­spite the trop­i­cal wave ax­is mov­ing west of T&T, the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice not­ed the at­mos­phere re­mained sig­nif­i­cant­ly moist and un­sta­ble. There­fore, it ex­pect­ed pe­ri­ods of rain or show­ers of vary­ing in­ten­si­ties.

The Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment is­sued a safe­ty up­date on the D’Abadie Bridge, ad­vis­ing the pub­lic to use al­ter­na­tive routes as the weath­er con­di­tions made it im­pass­able. Mu­nic­i­pal po­lice were on site.

It ad­vised cau­tioned with re­ports of flood­ing in West­moor­ings and Co­corite. At 2 pm, there were 10 re­ports of floods in the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, one in the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PTRC), four in the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC), in­clud­ing North East­ern Col­lege, San­gre Grande, the area around the Va­len­cia High School and the Va­len­cia Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, the Man­zanil­la Road, To­co Main Road in Matu­ra.

There was one in­ci­dent of flood in the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

There were 32 re­ports of floods in the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC), in­clud­ing the East­ern Main Road, Five Rivers, Ma­coya, Pi­ar­co Old Road, Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route in Arou­ca, Tu­na­puna Road, St Ce­celia Road, St Au­gus­tine, Thomas Street and Par­adise Gar­dens.

The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment re­port­ed res­i­den­tial flood­ing in El Do­ra­do and East­ern Main Road, Tacarigua.

The To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency re­port­ed de­bris and fall­en trees block­ing ac­cess to Stone­haven Bay, Black Rock; Cul­lo­den Bay, Gold­en Lane; Sawmill Road, Mt St George and Big Riv­er Hill, Ma­son Hall. There were al­so re­ports of land­slides along Ma­son Hall Road and Ply­mouth Road be­tween Sum­mer Hill and Whim De­vel­op­ment. There was al­so a pow­er out­age in Rox­bor­ough. Flash floods oc­curred at Low­lands.

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty re­port­ed that heavy rain­fall im­pact­ed op­er­a­tions at 25 Sur­face Wa­ter Treat­ment fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad’s north­ern re­gion and four in To­ba­go.

Clogged in­take screens, pow­er fail­ure and bro­ken lines led to a halt or re­duced pro­duc­tion.

The North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty can­celled ex­tend­ed hours at its health cen­tres. It ad­vised that ser­vice would re­sume at 8 am to­day. The weath­er al­so led the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) to close health cen­tres in Flana­gin Town, Gran Cou­va, Tabaquite, Freeport, Bar­rack­pore and Debe ear­ly. The SWRHA ex­pects to re­sume ser­vice to­day.

The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port opened the PBR be­tween Mount Hope and Ari­ma to light mo­tor ve­hi­cles un­til mid­night to mit­i­gate traf­fic con­ges­tion.

As a re­sult of ris­ing floods and per­sis­tent down­pours, the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty (NALIS) closed its Her­itage Li­brary, Pub­lic Li­braries and Ad­min­is­tra­tive Of­fices at 2 pm. It ex­pect­ed reg­u­lar li­brary ser­vices to re­sume to­day.

The Wa­ter Taxi Ser­vice ran an ad­di­tion­al sail­ing due to the weath­er, de­part­ing Port-of-Spain at 2.30 pm to San Fer­nan­do, ahead of its reg­u­lar 3.30 pm and 4.30 pm de­par­tures. Sev­er­al schools across the school end­ed ear­ly.

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) said it mon­i­tored the weath­er and floods af­fect­ing its de­vel­op­ments. In a re­lease, the HDC said it dis­trib­uted sand­bags in Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co, where the lev­el of the Arou­ca Riv­er was ris­ing and would pro­vide fur­ther as­sis­tance to this and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties when the wa­ter lev­els re­cede.

“We have placed and turned on pumps in strate­gic lo­ca­tions. These are be­ing used to push ex­cess wa­ter out. Our Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Team has been on the ground, mon­i­tor­ing our most high-risk com­mu­ni­ties. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, in some ar­eas, the vol­ume of wa­ter has risen faster than pre­dict­ed. For those ar­eas, the HDC will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor and pro­vide as­sis­tance to res­i­dents as is need­ed.”

The HDC said clean-up crews were on stand­by to de­ploy. weath­er per­mits.