Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment (RDLG) says there may be storm-like con­di­tions as Trop­i­cal De­pres­sion 2 pass­es through the re­gion, this week­end, but it is ready.

The Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­tre yes­ter­day said the de­pres­sion was fore­cast to de­vel­op in­to a Cat­e­go­ry Two hur­ri­cane by Mon­day, with To­ba­go most like­ly to be ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed. The Met Of­fice al­so said there would be storm-like con­di­tions af­fect­ing the is­land.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the min­istry ad­vised that there will be the usu­al ef­fects of rain­fall such as gusty winds, and flash flood­ing from the ex­pect­ed weath­er sys­tem.

The re­lease added that all RDLG as­sets were on stand­by to sup­port cor­po­ra­tions af­fect­ed by land­slides, fall­en trees and flash flood­ing, which may oc­cur be­cause of con­sis­tent and pro­longed rain­fall. The re­lease fur­ther em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ty pre­pared­ness and proac­tive mea­sures to mit­i­gate po­ten­tial risks as­so­ci­at­ed with ad­verse weath­er con­di­tions, as it en­cour­aged res­i­dents to re­port any blocked drains or fall­en trees.

The 14 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions’ Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Units are al­so on stand­by, the re­lease stat­ed, adding that the min­istry was co­or­di­nat­ing with rel­e­vant agen­cies to en­sure “a uni­fied and ef­fec­tive re­sponse strat­e­gy.”

And while the ad­verse weath­er is fore­cast to af­fect To­ba­go more than Trinidad, di­rec­tor of the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA), Al­lan Stew­art, yes­ter­day as­sured To­bag­o­ni­ans that the agency was ready to deal with any fall­out that may come from Trop­i­cal De­pres­sion 2.

Stew­art said TEMA was pre­pared for any ad­verse weath­er con­di­tions out­side of cat­e­go­ry three or four.

Asked what com­fort he could of­fer, Stew­art said, “We have been down this path many times be­fore. What we are com­fort­able with, we will deal with. We are most ready to deal with those se­vere weath­er events. What will bring us dis­com­fort is if we have to deal with any­thing be­yond a cat­e­go­ry three and four.”

He added that since that was not like­ly to oc­cur, there was noth­ing to wor­ry about.