Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad

@guardian.co.tt

The Met Of­fice yes­ter­day ex­tend­ed both the Yel­low Lev­el Ad­verse Weath­er Alert and the Or­ange Lev­el River­ine Flood Alert for Trinidad, as it fore­casts more bad weath­er to­day.

With an ap­proach­ing trop­i­cal wave ex­pect­ed to bring heavy show­ers and iso­lat­ed thun­der­storms over T&T, the Ad­verse Weath­er Alert was ex­tend­ed un­til 4 pm to­day. Per­sis­tent rain­fall over the South Oropouche Riv­er basin yes­ter­day re­sult­ed in its in­clu­sion in the river­ine up­date, which now has an end time of 6 pm to­day.

As of 6 pm yes­ter­day, wa­ter lev­els along the Ca­roni Riv­er (and its trib­u­taries) were crit­i­cal and above ca­pac­i­ty, with over­flow­ing re­port­ed in ar­eas such as Ibis Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co, San Raphael and Brazil. There were al­so sev­er­al re­ports of flood­ing in Cen­tral Trinidad in ar­eas such as Cunu­pia, Chin Chin and Ch­agua­nas. Riv­er lev­els re­mained most­ly con­tained in those ar­eas, with the ex­cep­tion of the Cunu­pia Riv­er which re­mained el­e­vat­ed.

The Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment’s in­ci­dent sum­ma­ry re­port in­di­cat­ed a to­tal of 45 weath­er-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents were re­port­ed yes­ter­day, in­clud­ing 27 re­ports of flood­ing.

A to­tal of 450 sand­bags were dis­trib­uted at the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions yes­ter­day, with the high­est num­ber be­ing dis­trib­uted in Pe­nal/Debe. Among the re­lief items were six tar­pau­lins and three mat­tress­es dis­trib­uted by the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion.

Min­is­ter Khadi­ja Ameen yes­ter­day said there were two in­stances of col­lapsed road­ways in Poole Vil­lage, Rio Claro and Heights of Aripo, Ari­ma. She said en­gi­neer­ing teams had been dis­patched to make rec­om­men­da­tions for restor­ing ac­cess to those ar­eas.

De­spite this week’s del­uge up to yes­ter­day, the week­end fore­cast is op­ti­mistic as fair con­di­tions are ex­pect­ed.