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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Met Service upgrades riverine alert to orange

by

28 days ago
20250612
Pedestrians walk through floodwaters along lower Charlotte Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

Pedestrians walk through floodwaters along lower Charlotte Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

ROGER JACOB

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad@

guardian.co.tt

Af­ter at least five hours of tor­ren­tial rain­fall led to ex­ten­sive flash flood­ing across both Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day, cit­i­zens have to brace for more to­day.

Last night, the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) up­grad­ed the River­ine Flood Alert to an Or­ange Lev­el, as sev­er­al lo­ca­tions along the Ca­roni Riv­er basin were on the verge of over­flow­ing their banks, with wa­ter lev­els on an up­ward tra­jec­to­ry, and three out of the four riv­er lev­el mon­i­tors along the Ca­roni Riv­er at or above 100 per cent.

In an in­ter­view with CNC3 News, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen in­di­cat­ed that al­though flood pumps were al­ready op­er­a­tional in the Bam­boo com­mu­ni­ties, wa­ter lev­els were still ris­ing. She said sand­bags could be col­lect­ed at the re­spec­tive Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Units (DMU’s) to aid in mit­i­gat­ing any po­ten­tial flood dam­age.

The min­is­ter urged those liv­ing in flood-prone ar­eas not to wait un­til the wa­ter reached crit­i­cal lev­els to take ac­tion.

She al­so sug­gest­ed that res­i­dents el­e­vate the fur­ni­ture in their homes to pre­vent pos­si­ble loss­es. In ex­treme cas­es, she said, if the wa­ter reach­es life-threat­en­ing lev­els, res­i­dents should con­sid­er evac­u­at­ing their home and con­tact their lo­cal DMU for shel­ter in­for­ma­tion.

River­ine flood­ing is usu­al­ly the re­sult of sev­er­al days of rain­fall, and af­ter the heavy down­pours on Tues­day, all eyes were on the Ca­roni and North Oropouche Riv­er basins head­ing in­to yes­ter­day. Iso­lat­ed show­ers dur­ing the morn­ing quick­ly in­creased in fre­quen­cy and in­ten­si­ty, with thun­der­storms de­vel­op­ing over Trinidad by the late morn­ing. By the af­ter­noon, there was wide­spread heavy rain­fall over both is­lands which per­sist­ed for sev­er­al hours, prompt­ing a 24-hour ex­ten­sion of the Ad­verse Weath­er Alert to 4 pm to­day.

The near-con­tin­u­ous del­uge be­gan to over­whelm the small­er wa­ter cours­es across Trinidad, prompt­ing the is­suance of the River­ine Flood Alert at 6.30 pm by the TTMS, which was sub­se­quent­ly up­dat­ed near­ly three hours lat­er.

Crown Point, To­ba­go, record­ed about three inch­es of rain­fall yes­ter­day, with one re­port of flash flood­ing in that lo­ca­tion. The To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) al­so re­port­ed two oth­er dis­rup­tions—a land­slide along Bad Rock Road, and gal­vanised sheets from a dam­aged roof par­tial­ly block­ing the junc­tion of Buc­coo Main Road and Peri­win­kle Road.

The TTMS said there was a 60 per cent chance of iso­lat­ed thun­der­storms this morn­ing. With the ground al­ready sat­u­rat­ed, there is an in­creased risk of flash flood­ing and land­slides in ar­eas so prone.

Gusty winds can still be ex­pect­ed to ac­com­pa­ny heavy down­pours, and they can al­so tem­porar­i­ly ag­i­tate sea con­di­tions.

The TTMS al­so ad­vised mo­torists to avoid dri­ving through flood­ed ar­eas and take ex­tra cau­tion on the na­tion’s road­ways.

Even though the alert is valid un­til 4 pm to­day, an­oth­er trop­i­cal wave is ex­pect­ed to bring ad­di­tion­al rain­fall ear­ly to­mor­row, po­ten­tial­ly ex­ac­er­bat­ing the river­ine flood­ing.

T&T is al­so in a spring tide pe­ri­od (high­er than nor­mal high tides) and run-off at high tide times can be slow.


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