Jesse Ramdeo

With pos­si­ble ex­treme weath­er on the hori­zon as a po­ten­tial trop­i­cal cy­clone moves clos­er to the is­land, parts of south Trinidad were par­tic­u­lar­ly buzzing with ac­tiv­i­ty on Tues­day.

Hours be­fore the storm was sched­uled to make land­fall, the race had been on to pro­tect peo­ple, pets and prop­er­ty.

With sus­tained rain­fall and thun­der­storm ac­tiv­i­ty threat­en­ing to trig­ger flood­ing in low-ly­ing com­mu­ni­ties, res­i­dents from the Pe­nal/Debe area were left fran­tic for sand­bags to for­ti­fy their homes from pos­si­ble ris­ing wa­ters.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Pe­nal Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Dr Allen Sam­my said em­ploy­ees were work­ing over­time to meet the de­mand for sand­bags.

He said, “At noon we crossed a thou­sand, and that’s for to­day alone, don’t for­get we have been dis­trib­ut­ing all week.”

Sam­my said the surge for sand­bags was un­like what he had seen be­fore.

He said, “There’s a tremen­dous rush, even dur­ing Bret we nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced this, peo­ple al­so wait­ed last minute, but the rush has been un­be­liev­able.”

Sam­my al­so said over 1,000 gal­lons of diesel have since been cred­it­ed to the cor­po­ra­tion, af­ter a lack of fund­ing pre­vent­ed them from stock­ing up.

At a press con­fer­ence on Tues­day, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi said the chair­man could have au­tho­rised funds to be re-di­rect­ed. Sam­my, how­ev­er, said it was not as easy as it seemed.

He said, “A month ago, a re­quest was made to vire­ment for an­oth­er item of ex­pen­di­ture and we have re­ceived no at­ten­tion, and that’s one month wait­ing, and that’s a sim­ple re­quest. So when the min­is­ter gives the im­pres­sion to the pub­lic that we can vire funds and it is a sim­ple ex­er­cise, it is not, it has been com­pli­cat­ed by his min­istry and even if we were to do that, they do not re­plen­ish the funds so it means some oth­er set of peo­ple would have suf­fered.”

Me­tres away from where sand­bags were be­ing picked up at the cor­po­ra­tion’s of­fice, oth­ers were top­ping up on oth­er es­sen­tials.

One shop­per said, “We don’t know how se­vere it go­ing to be, it look­ing like it might be se­ri­ous so we do­ing some last-minute shop­ping.”

Man­ag­er at MS Food stores Sara Sookoo said the rush was an­tic­i­pat­ed due to the threat­en­ing weath­er.

She said, “It is ex­treme­ly busy to­day due to the pan­ic buy­ing be­cause of the storm, a lot of peo­ple don’t want to be un­pre­pared so be­cause of that, they tak­ing front as we like to say.”

Up un­til yes­ter­day morn­ing, sand­bags were still be­ing pre­pared by mem­bers of the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for the area Kennedy Richards con­firmed that three of the bor­ough’s 11 emer­gency shel­ters were ac­ti­vat­ed and all ef­forts were be­ing made to mit­i­gate dis­as­ter caused by the ad­verse weath­er.

De­spite calls for calm, pan­ic piled on, as Guardian Me­dia cap­tured long lines to ac­cess gas sta­tions across the south­ern city. The city’s may­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo told Guardian Me­dia that the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment ​​​​​​​Unit was pre­pared for any cri­sis and they were pre­pared to weath­er any storm.