Weather damage cripples Flagstaff Communications Tower; TEMA calls emergency meeting

SEIGO­NIE MO­HAMMED

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

Some com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture in To­ba­go has been com­pro­mised af­ter the Flagstaff Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Tow­er in Char­lot­teville sus­tained ma­jor dam­age dur­ing heavy rains and strong winds, prompt­ing an emer­gency re­sponse by the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA).

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, TEMA Di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art, said the tow­er had been in a de­te­ri­o­rat­ed con­di­tion for some time pri­or to the in­ci­dent. The se­vere weath­er ex­pe­ri­enced on Thurs­day ex­ac­er­bat­ed the struc­ture's vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, re­sult­ing in its dam­age.

Stew­art not­ed that the dam­age has dis­rupt­ed sev­er­al util­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices op­er­at­ing from the Flagstaff site. Ma­rine com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels have al­so been af­fect­ed, in­clud­ing as­sets uti­liz­ing the Ul­tra High Fre­quen­cy (UHF) and Ex­treme­ly High Fre­quen­cy (EHF) bands.

TEMA of­fi­cials are cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing a pre­lim­i­nary dam­age as­sess­ment to de­ter­mine the full ex­tent of the im­pact and iden­ti­fy im­me­di­ate re­me­di­al ac­tions re­quired to re­store ser­vices.

In re­sponse to the in­ci­dent, the agency has con­vened an emer­gency meet­ing sched­uled for 9 a.m. on June 12 at the To­ba­go Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (TEOC), Scar­bor­ough.

Stew­art says the meet­ing is ex­pect­ed to fo­cus on the im­pact of the dam­age, safe­ty con­cerns sur­round­ing the site and restora­tion of af­fect­ed telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices.

TEMA has urged all rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers to at­tend the meet­ing, em­pha­siz­ing the im­por­tance of a co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach as the is­land works to ad­dress the dis­rup­tion and pre­vent fur­ther im­pacts on crit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems.

The agency said fur­ther up­dates will be pro­vid­ed as as­sess­ments con­tin­ue and ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion be­comes avail­able.