SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

As the Gov­ern­ment braced for the im­pact of a trop­i­cal wave which has been pre­dict­ed as hav­ing a 70 per cent like­li­hood to turn in­to a trop­i­cal storm, 387 shel­ters across the is­land were put in­to op­er­a­tion on Tues­day.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al press con­fer­ence on Tues­day, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi con­firmed the shel­ters were opened and ready to re­ceive those who may need to evac­u­ate their homes.

“Some of our shel­ters in­volve schools and, of course, last night we took the de­ci­sion for schools to close, there­fore, we ac­ti­vat­ed the schools, the ones that are not schools are al­ready open and we will con­tin­ue to roll the open­ing all up,” Al-Rawi said.

The press con­fer­ence start­ed at 11 am and Al-Rawi said he was con­fi­dent all shel­ters would have been opened and ready by then.

A list of the 387 shel­ters, along with con­tact num­bers, was wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia on Tues­day.

Al-Rawi said the Gov­ern­ment had al­so tak­en the ex­tra step of pro­vid­ing safe park­ing for those who live in flood-prone ar­eas, as he said the sec­ond-high­est in­sur­ance claim af­ter ma­jor weath­er events were for flood-dam­aged ve­hi­cles.

“We want to make sure that pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than cure, so see­ing these im­ages of cars in a low-ly­ing area where you live next to a riv­er that is at full ca­pac­i­ty be­cause the rains are com­ing down and the high tide is up, com­mon sense pre­vails, don’t leave your ve­hi­cles there,” he said.

Al-Rawi said those venues in­clud­ed the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, the Ude­cott parkade in Port-of-Spain, Na­pari­ma Bowl, Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), South­ern Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA), Gulf City Mall and all com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres.

He said 712 Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice of­fi­cers have been called out to en­sure the ve­hi­cles parked at these fa­cil­i­ties are kept safe.

Al-Rawi said drones would be used to mon­i­tor flood-prone ar­eas to de­ter­mine when man­pow­er needs to be dis­patched to as­sist cit­i­zens.

As for com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Al-Rawi said the Gov­ern­ment was pre­pared to share in­for­ma­tion man­u­al­ly if the need aris­es by util­is­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty forces sta­tioned across the coun­try.

“We have ra­dio that is still in ef­fect, re­mem­ber, charge your ra­dios, have your bat­ter­ies ready, don’t wait for com­mu­ni­ca­tions to go down to ze­ro, in the event that the in­ter­net fails, there is al­ways the GPRS sys­tem, which is the low-band­width sys­tem… that GPRS sys­tem has text mes­sag­ing, TSTT has a plat­form for SMS which the Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions is man­ag­ing,” Al- Rawi said.

He al­so urged cit­i­zens to be vig­i­lant when shar­ing pho­tos on­line, as he said fake news would on­ly ham­per emer­gency ser­vices from do­ing their jobs.

“Please do not for­ward fake news, if you make the mis­take of spread­ing fake news, you are go­ing to dis­tract re­source at­ten­tion. What hap­pens un­for­tu­nate­ly, if we are re­al­is­tic, the truth is peo­ple send im­ages from two years, three years ago, so please don’t clog le­git­i­mate com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works with fake im­ages,” he said.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les was al­so present at the press con­fer­ence. He said emer­gency plans have been ac­ti­vat­ed for all util­i­ties.

Gon­za­les said this in­clud­ed bring­ing out all em­ploy­ees of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC.)

“T&TEC ac­ti­vat­ed its cen­tral com­mand cen­tre at 6 pm yes­ter­day, all key tech­ni­cal per­son­nel and staff are on full alert and ready to re­spond, all leave has been can­celled for all field staff and two crews have been de­ployed to To­ba­go,” Gon­za­les said.

He said the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty had al­so im­ple­ment­ed its emer­gency re­sponse plan, which in­cludes call­ing out staff and plac­ing oth­er em­ploy­ees on stand­by if the need for their ser­vices aris­es.

“The fo­cus would be on min­imis­ing risk to pub­lic health and safe­ty, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and re­port­ing to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty on ear­ly restora­tion of ser­vices in the event of a dis­rup­tion,” Gon­za­les said.

Gon­za­les said pri­or­i­ty will be giv­en to schools and hos­pi­tals for wa­ter truck­ing ser­vices.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said his min­istry was on stand­by to as­sist in ar­eas prone to land­slides. He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions about ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to the Cum­ber­land Hill site, which is used as a trans­mis­sion hub in Trinidad for me­dia broad­casts.

“The min­istry would have been very proac­tive in en­sur­ing that we have equip­ment at all ar­eas that are ba­si­cal­ly prone to land­slips so in case some­thing hap­pens on the route to the site there, the min­istry would be able to ren­der that ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to the road,” Sinanan said.

He said in prepa­ra­tion for the in­clement weath­er yes­ter­day, the Wa­ter Taxi Ser­vice be­tween Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do was shut down by 2 pm, the In­ter-Is­land Fer­ry Ser­vice was ex­pect­ed to be shut down by 3 pm and the Pub­lic Ser­vice Trans­port Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) was asked to op­er­ate as “long as hu­man­ly pos­si­ble.”