Preparedness month launches as flood risks, dumping come under scrutiny

Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

As Trinidad and To­ba­go heads in­to what some of­fi­cials ex­pect to be an ac­tive rainy and hur­ri­cane sea­son, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen has launched a month-long na­tion­al pre­pared­ness cam­paign.

Speak­ing at the launch of Na­tion­al Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Pre­ven­tion Month (NDPPM) 2026 on May 1, Ameen said the min­istry’s “31 Days of Pre­pared­ness and Pre­ven­tion” cam­paign comes at a crit­i­cal time, warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not af­ford to wait un­til the first storm warn­ing to act.

The Min­is­ter framed the ini­tia­tive against what she de­scribed as a “con­cern­ing” above-av­er­age sea­son­al fore­cast in the re­gion. “This is not an ab­stract pro­jec­tion,” Ameen said. “It takes on­ly one sys­tem, one hur­ri­cane, one storm to threat­en our safe­ty.”

Built around the theme M.A.Y., Mind the Signs, An­chor Your Homes, You’re Pre­pared, the cam­paign aims to move dis­as­ter readi­ness be­yond pub­lic aware­ness and in­to di­rect ac­tion across com­mu­ni­ties.

Ameen said the min­istry, work­ing along­side the coun­try’s 14 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions and oth­er state agen­cies, will spend the month con­duct­ing shel­ter sim­u­la­tions, emer­gency drills, drain-clear­ing ex­er­cis­es and pub­lic out­reach pro­grammes.

“Pre­pared­ness must be proac­tive, not re­ac­tive,” she said.

One of the cam­paign’s ma­jor tar­gets will come on May 30, when gov­ern­ment teams will launch a na­tion­wide reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve aimed at sign­ing up 200,000 cit­i­zens to the na­tion­al Pub­lic Alert No­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (PANS), al­low­ing au­thor­i­ties to de­liv­er emer­gency warn­ings di­rect­ly to res­i­dents.

The min­is­ter al­so re­vealed that the Gov­ern­ment has al­ready mapped flood-prone com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad us­ing his­tor­i­cal flood­ing da­ta, iden­ti­fy­ing the Ca­roni Riv­er Basin and South Oropouche Riv­er Basin among the most vul­ner­a­ble ar­eas.

Com­mu­ni­ties from Port of Spain and the East-West Cor­ri­dor to Rio Claro, Tal­paro, cen­tral and south Trinidad have all been iden­ti­fied for in­ter­ven­tion.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that flood­ing can­not be elim­i­nat­ed, Ameen said ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion and main­te­nance should sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce its im­pact. “I’m not say­ing we will have ze­ro flood­ing. I’m say­ing the flood­ing should be tremen­dous­ly re­duced.”

Ameen said one of the biggest chal­lenges re­mains il­le­gal dump­ing and poor de­vel­op­ment prac­tices, with drain-clear­ing crews reg­u­lar­ly find­ing dis­card­ed ap­pli­ances, mat­tress­es and oth­er bulky waste block­ing wa­ter­ways.

She al­so point­ed to unau­tho­rised con­struc­tion that has ob­struct­ed drains and nat­ur­al wa­ter­cours­es, say­ing stronger en­force­ment by mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions will be nec­es­sary to re­duce long-term flood risk.

To strength­en the coun­try’s re­sponse ca­pac­i­ty, the Min­is­ter said more than 300 com­mu­ni­ty emer­gency re­spon­ders have al­ready been trained na­tion­wide, with vol­un­teers equipped with boats, chain­saws and res­cue equip­ment. Ad­di­tion­al teams un­der the na­tion­al pro­gramme for up­keep of pub­lic spaces are al­so be­ing pre­pared for rapid de­ploy­ment.

In one of the most sig­nif­i­cant up­grades ahead of the rainy sea­son, the min­is­ter said gov­ern­ment agen­cies, work­ing with the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), have ex­pand­ed flood mon­i­tor­ing be­yond ma­jor rivers by in­stalling in­stru­ments in trib­u­taries, al­low­ing ear­li­er warn­ings be­fore wa­ter­ways over­flow.

As the coun­try braces for months of heavy rain­fall and po­ten­tial trop­i­cal sys­tems, Ameen’s mes­sage was di­rect: “Pre­pared­ness can­not wait un­til the first alert.”