Light­ning, heavy rain­fall and gusty winds on Wednes­day night left a fam­i­ly in East Trinidad count­ing loss­es af­ter their roof was torn off and sev­er­al ve­hi­cles were dam­aged. The dam­age to the house is es­ti­mat­ed at over $60,000, and in­cludes house­hold ap­pli­ances—fur­ni­ture, stove, re­frig­er­a­tor, tele­vi­sion, and beds. The cost of dam­age to the ve­hi­cles is yet to be de­ter­mined.

Sal­ly Dabreau, a house­wife of Mela­jo, Ve­ga de Oropouche, To­co Main Road, said, “Around 9.30 pm, I now bathe and went and lie down and I hear a rum­bling noise and like the gal­vanise hit­ting each oth­er. I get re­al fright­en be­cause to be hon­est, I thought was the sea was com­ing. The sound was dif­fer­ent and when I watch out­side, all the trees and every­thing was like bend­ing.”

Sal­ly and her hus­band De­vanand es­caped with­out in­juries.

“I went and hide at the side of my bed be­cause I was that fright­en. The roof was like rais­ing off and hit­ting back and when I walked out­side, I did see what hap­pened af­ter the breeze, half of the roof fall in the liv­ing room and the oth­er half fly across by the neigh­bour and land­ed on the ve­hi­cles that was parked. When I looked up to­wards the roof I saw the sky. The roof was blown away.”

San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ken­wyn Phillip, coun­cil­lor for the area Daryl Mo­han, and mem­bers of the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit of the SGRC vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly yes­ter­day.

Chair­man Phillip as­sured the fam­i­ly that in­ter­im re­lief like a tar­pau­lin, a ham­per, and a mat­tress, would be made avail­able to them.

Phillip said, “I know the Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, she would have con­tact­ed her this morn­ing be­cause this par­tic­u­lar roof was all over so­cial me­dia last night and she said that the min­istry is on stand­by, will­ing to as­sist in any way to try and ex­pe­dite what­so­ev­er to bring some kind of re­lief to the fam­i­ly.”

Ac­cord­ing to the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion’s Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit (DMU), 13 in­ci­dents were re­port­ed.

As of 3 pm yes­ter­day, the DMU con­firmed it had re­ceived four di­rect re­ports, while coun­cil­lors sub­mit­ted nine. No re­ports were re­ceived from the Fire Ser­vice, Po­lice, ODPM, or oth­er sup­port­ing agen­cies.

The ma­jor­i­ty of re­ports in­volved blown-off roofs in ar­eas such as Ve­ga de Oropouche, Brook­lyn, Coro­na­tion Road, and North East­ern Set­tle­ment. In re­sponse, tar­pau­lins were dis­trib­uted to sev­er­al af­fect­ed house­holds, while as­sess­ments were com­plet­ed at oth­er lo­ca­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice and the US Weath­er Ser­vice, Wednes­day evening saw clus­ters of thun­der­storms ex­tend­ing from Grena­da over To­ba­go and east of Trinidad. As the thun­der­storms ma­tured, large rain­drops and ice par­ti­cles be­gan falling in­side the clouds. These fell rapid­ly, drag­ging air down­wards in what is known as a down­draft. When that down­draft hit the ground, it spread in all di­rec­tions as a down­burst, sim­i­lar to wa­ter hit­ting the bot­tom of a sink and spread­ing out­ward.

Satel­lite im­agery showed the down­bursts formed around 7.30 pm, reach­ing Trinidad’s east coast by 9.20 pm and the west coast by 10 pm. The strongest wind gust record­ed was 61.2 km/h at Mount St Bene­dict at 10.09 pm, clas­si­fied as a mod­er­ate gale, just be­low trop­i­cal storm force.

The event last­ed up to an hour but weak­ened sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­fore reach­ing the west coast.