Gail Alexan­der

Tree trim­ming and cut­ting, sand­bag­ging, re­in­forc­ing drainage and alerts on health ser­vices op­er­a­tions were some of the ac­tiv­i­ty en­gaged in by many res­i­dents of Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons on Tues­day, as they were on alert prepar­ing for the ap­proach­ing storm, which, at noon yes­ter­day, was 250 miles off T&T.

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­ster Faris Al-Rawi, who de­tailed at length the prepa­ra­tions by au­thor­i­ties, how­ev­er, stressed the need for peo­ple to pre­pare.

He said, “Man will plan but God de­cides.”

Some res­i­dents made con­scious ef­forts to cut down and trim tall trees over­hang­ing close to prop­er­ties.

Some oc­cu­pants with ex­ten­sive glass fit­tings were al­so con­sci­en­tious enough to tape up and se­cure against wind ve­loc­i­ty.

The Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, on high alert, re­ceived re­quests for sand­bags and dis­trib­ut­ing from quite ear­ly yes­ter­day.

A num­ber of peo­ple vis­it­ed the cor­po­ra­tion’s di­vi­sions in Bel­mont and St James to get sand­bags.

“We’re work­ing right through with every­body,” said a cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cial when asked when they could close.

But not all mem­bers of the pop­u­la­tion were con­vinced.

In a taxi, a fe­male pas­sen­ger asked, “This thing still com­ing?”

Oth­er pas­sen­gers who worked on Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain, ex­pressed con­cern that some work­ers had to go to work.

In some parts of south be­tween Williamsville and Mara­bel­la, res­i­dents were al­so look­ing to se­cure their prop­er­ty and mon­i­tor­ing drainage.

Gov­ern­ment of­fices were clos­ing and EBC’s of­fice al­so.

The Health Min­istry ad­vised of the fol­low­ing mea­sures from noon yes­ter­day on op­er­a­tions of health in­sti­tu­tions:

• Sus­pen­sion of non-es­sen­tial ser­vices, eg all out­pa­tient clin­ics at both hos­pi­tals and health cen­tres.

• The pub­lic is ad­vised that all Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency lo­ca­tions will re­main open.

• All in­pa­tient hos­pi­tal ser­vices will re­main open.

• All emer­gency am­bu­lance ser­vices will re­main op­er­a­tional. The pub­lic is re­mind­ed that GM­RTT can be con­tact­ed at 811.

Pa­tients are al­so re­mind­ed to re­main com­pli­ant with all their med­ica­tion as pre­scribed by your doc­tor.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic are fur­ther ad­vised to avoid con­tact with flood­wa­ters to re­duce the risk of con­tract­ing wa­ter-borne dis­eases such as gas­troen­teri­tis and lep­tospiro­sis.

Per­sons can vis­it the Min­istry of Health’s web­site and so­cial me­dia pages for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.