The T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) yes­ter­day is­sued its first Ad­verse Weath­er Alert for the 2019 rainy sea­son.

Warn­ing cit­i­zens to brace for pe­ri­ods of show­ers and thun­der­storms af­fect­ing parts of T&T due to the pas­sage of a Trop­i­cal Wave, of­fi­cials said the ad­verse weath­er would oc­cur from 3 am to 4 pm to­mor­row.

In­di­cat­ing that a Yel­low Lev­el Alert has been is­sued, of­fi­cials said it was pos­si­ble the ad­verse weath­er could be­gin ear­li­er in some ar­eas. Ad­vis­ing that street/flash flood­ing or land­slips are like­ly in ar­eas so prone, they said gusty winds may al­so oc­cur at times.

To­day al­so marked the start of the 2019 At­lantic Hur­ri­cane Sea­son and the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness (ODPM) urged cit­i­zens to pre­pare for any even­tu­al­i­ty.

Ad­dress­ing res­i­dents of Green­vale, La Hor­quet­ta, dur­ing a weath­er-readi­ness out­look fo­rum yes­ter­day, cli­ma­tol­o­gist Ken­neth Kerr said the ef­fort was part of the TTMS’ im­proved man­date to pro­vide time­ly and rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion to cit­i­zens so they can pro­tect life and prop­er­ty.

He said, "We be­lieve that if they make ear­ly de­ci­sions based on our fore­cast, that they can re­duce the im­pacts of flood­ing in terms of hu­man and per­son­al suf­fer­ing, as well as the fi­nan­cial costs."

Asked if it was pos­si­ble to ac­cu­rate­ly pre­dict when and how se­vere the rains will be, Kerr said, "We know that there is go­ing to be flood­ing from time to time. It may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be in this com­mu­ni­ty but there are a num­ber of things that per­sons can do ear­ly to al­le­vi­ate or re­duce the im­pacts."

Kerr said his­tor­i­cal­ly the north­east­ern part of T&T has been the wettest, while the south­west­ern part is nor­mal­ly the dri­est.

How­ev­er, he added, "That doesn’t mean any­thing with re­spect to flood­ing. We had the in­ci­dent in 2012 in Diego Mar­tin. We had mas­sive land­slides in Bel­mont and St Ann’s in 1998 and 1993. In 2014, we had the Man­zanil­la event. We had the San­ta Cruz event in 2013 where two per­sons died and one drowned in San­gre Grande."

Kerr warned that every­one was vul­ner­a­ble to rain­fall and should not be com­pla­cent when it comes to prepa­ra­tion.

Al­so present at Green­vale were of­fi­cials from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) who as­sured that the ma­jor­i­ty of the mit­i­ga­tion and in­fra­struc­ture work that was pro­posed for the com­mu­ni­ty had been com­plet­ed in time for the rainy sea­son.

They viewed some of the com­plet­ed work.

HDC said work was con­tin­u­ing on the con­struc­tion and in­stal­la­tion of an au­to­mat­ed flood pump­ing sta­tion to en­sure in­creased and more re­li­able pump­ing ca­pac­i­ty at the de­ten­tion ponds.

In ad­di­tion to the mit­i­ga­tion work that has been con­duct­ed, the HDC pro­cured the ser­vices of a num­ber of con­trac­tors to re­fur­bish 435 hous­ing units which were dam­aged by the floods.

To date, 375 homes have been com­plet­ed and hand­ed over.

Since last Oc­to­ber’s flood event, the HDC has en­sured that the or­ga­ni­za­tion main­tains an ac­tive pres­ence in the Green­vale Park com­mu­ni­ty.

The Drainage Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port has al­so con­duct­ed work on the Ca­roni Riv­er which is on the out­skirts of the Green­vale Park com­mu­ni­ty.

The fol­low­ing is a list of tips for cit­i­zens to pre­pare:

1. Clear all drains around your prop­er­ty to al­low wa­ter to flow freely;

2. Clear de­bris from your gut­ters and down­spouts;

3. Fill and Pre-po­si­tion sand­bags around your prop­er­ty, es­pe­cial­ly if your area or prop­er­ty has a his­to­ry of flood­ing;

4. Keep all im­por­tant per­son­al doc­u­ments, valu­ables, and vi­tal med­ical sup­plies in a wa­ter­proof bag or con­tain­er in an ac­ces­si­ble lo­ca­tion;

5. Build an emer­gency kit with enough food, wa­ter, and med­ical sup­plies for at least three days;

6. Pre­pare a fam­i­ly emer­gency plan;

7. Keep a list of emer­gency tele­phone num­bers on your re­frig­er­a­tor or any­where that is eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble to every­one in your house­hold.