Torrential rain causes flooding, forces closure of schools

Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad

@guardian.co.tt

Heavy rains and thun­der­storms swept across T&T yes­ter­day, leav­ing a trail of fall­en trees, flash floods, and in­fra­struc­ture dam­age in their wake.

The coun­try’s first Ad­verse Weath­er Alert for June took ef­fect at 2 am. 

With­in hours, the show­ers left emer­gency crews in To­ba­go scram­bling to re­spond to in­ci­dents from Ma­son Hall to Scar­bor­ough. Safe­ty con­cerns prompt­ed of­fi­cials from the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy to or­der the clo­sure of all schools in To­ba­go around 10.30 am.

The weath­er sys­tem hit To­ba­go and north­ern Trinidad par­tic­u­lar­ly hard, with the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) and the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment (RDLG) work­ing through the morn­ing to clear fall­en trees from blocked road­ways. 

By day’s end, au­thor­i­ties had record­ed 13 weath­er-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents, rang­ing from fall­en trees and land­slides to flood­ing.

“At this time, all our re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are on high alert,” said Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen. 

“All of the flood mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts con­tin­ue, but where we have emer­gen­cies aris­ing, we will di­vert equip­ment and per­son­nel.” 

The min­is­ter al­so ad­dressed con­cerns about the par­tial col­lapse of the main road in Aripo, ex­plain­ing that while yes­ter­day’s weath­er played a role, the in­ci­dent stemmed from an on­go­ing ero­sion is­sue that au­thor­i­ties had been mon­i­tor­ing.

TEMA re­port­ed ten weath­er-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents by 2 pm. Trees crashed down in Ma­son Hall, Glam­or­gan, Belle Gar­den, and Char­lot­teville, while flood­wa­ters in­un­dat­ed ar­eas in Whim and Scar­bor­ough. 

In De­laford, a fall­en tree dam­aged a house, and in Belle Gar­den, high-ten­sion elec­tri­cal wires came to rest dan­ger­ous­ly on a rooftop.

In a 6 pm up­date, of­fi­cials of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) said that sur­face wa­ter treat­ment fa­cil­i­ties across To­ba­go and North­ern Trinidad were strug­gling with high tur­bid­i­ty lev­els and clogged screens—di­rect re­sults of rivers swollen by the day’s heavy rain­fall. 

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) up­dat­ed their alert at 10 am yes­ter­day, warn­ing that more sig­nif­i­cant rain­fall is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to­day. The cur­rent alert re­mains ac­tive un­til 4 pm to­day, pend­ing any fur­ther up­dates.

Ad­di­tion­al rain­fall is fore­cast for to­mor­row and Fri­day, with a mod­er­ate chance of thun­der­storms that could bring sim­i­lar con­di­tions back to both is­lands. 

While river­ine flood­ing is not cur­rent­ly a ma­jor con­cern, me­te­o­rol­o­gists warn that per­sis­tent rain­fall head­ing in­to Fri­day will grad­u­al­ly in­crease flood risks, es­pe­cial­ly across North­ern Trinidad where drainage sys­tems are al­ready sat­u­rat­ed.

In ad­di­tion, Spring Tides are al­so now in ef­fect fol­low­ing last night’s full moon. These high­er-than-nor­mal high tides will slow wa­ter runoff dur­ing peak tide times, and fur­ther el­e­vate flood risks across vul­ner­a­ble coastal and low-ly­ing ar­eas.