Jesse Ramdeo

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is call­ing for calm ahead of the im­pend­ing se­vere weath­er con­di­tion that is ex­pect­ed to sweep across the is­land.

Fol­low­ing an emer­gency man­age­ment re­sponse meet­ing on Mon­day, Au­gus­tine cau­tioned To­bag­o­ni­ans against pan­ick­ing as the weath­er sys­tem ap­proach­es. In the same breath, he said the is­land was brac­ing as po­ten­tial trop­i­cal cy­clone 2 bar­rels to­ward To­ba­go.

“We are pre­pared for a worst-case sce­nario more or less, so we may not get a worst-case sce­nario and I pray God we don’t, but we prepar­ing in the event that is the case,” Au­gus­tine said.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the meet­ing, Au­gus­tine said the re­sponse to the dis­as­ter will take prece­dence over oth­er on­go­ing projects if the need arose.

“If there is a ma­jor nat­ur­al dis­as­ter then that be­comes the pri­or­i­ty of To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment agen­da and I am pre­pared to put on the back-burn­er oth­er plans and needs we have for this fi­nal quar­ter of this fis­cal year to treat with emer­gency needs,” the THA Chief Sec­re­tary said.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease is­sued by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal ser­vice yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the Trop­i­cal Wave lo­cat­ed east of Trinidad and To­ba­go was up­grad­ed to a po­ten­tial Trop­i­cal Cy­clone 2. The coun­try was sub­se­quent­ly placed un­der a Trop­i­cal Storm warn­ing, which meant that storm con­di­tions were ex­pect­ed over the warn­ing area with­in 36 hours.

The re­lease stat­ed, “Pe­ri­ods of heavy to in­tense show­ers and or thun­der­storms are like­ly which can re­sult in rain­fall ac­cu­mu­la­tion in ex­cess of 3 inch­es. Gusty winds in ex­cess of 70 km/hr can be ex­pect­ed. These wind gusts are ca­pa­ble of break­ing tree branch­es, dis­plac­ing un­se­cured roofs and loose out­door ob­jects, and can even top­ple over un­healthy trees. The risk of land­slides/land­slips is like­ly in ar­eas so prone and sea con­di­tions can be­come oc­ca­sion­al­ly rough.”’

With a po­ten­tial nat­ur­al dis­as­ter on the hori­zon, Au­gus­tine said school doors will re­main open to­day. How­ev­er, he said de­vel­op­ments with the weath­er can im­pact that de­ci­sion.

“School will hap­pen to­mor­row Tues­day, if there is a need to not have school on Wednes­day, that no­tice will be placed in the pub­lic do­main on Tues­day af­ter­noon,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said with three inch­es of rain­fall ex­pect­ed, all emer­gency units were stand­ing by to ren­der as­sis­tance where nec­es­sary.

Mean­while, To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art said on­ly af­ter fur­ther as­sess­ment of the loom­ing weath­er con­di­tions will a de­ci­sion be made about whether or not all 33 emer­gency shel­ters avail­able on the is­land will be made ac­ces­si­ble.

He said, “Not all 33 based on this lev­el of event will be re­quired to be ac­ti­vat­ed but in terms of readi­ness and the ad­min­is­tra­tive works be­hind the scenes, those are the shel­ters we have iden­ti­fied.”

Au­gus­tine said an­oth­er meet­ing will be con­vened with stake­hold­ers to­day to de­ter­mine whether the ac­tion plan will have to be ad­just­ed.