As much as I am glad to boast of T&T's Olympic vic­to­ries, and con­grat­u­late the Olympians who have won them, I can't help but lament the Gov­ern­ment's ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in call­ing yet an­oth­er pub­lic hol­i­day in a month al­ready crammed with them. To be hon­est, I was walk­ing through slush and mud in the St An­tho­ny's Church yard in flood-hit Pe­tit Val­ley when I heard of the hol­i­day, and the Olympics were the last thing on my mind. In­stead, I some­how thought it was a day for the res­i­dents of the Diego Mar­tin and Mar­aval val­leys to clean up and mourn. Of course, I was wrong. Some­time Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon I ven­tured from my hill­side home in Sime­on Road, Pe­tit Val­ley, to vis­it my chil­dren's grand­moth­er on the oth­er side of the Diego Mar­tin Riv­er. The Crys­tal Stream High­way was still closed, and the oth­er ar­te­r­i­al roads were clogged with silt and de­bris. My heart bled when I saw res­i­dents of Sier­ra Leone Road fish­ing from their flood­ed homes fur­ni­ture and rugs still drip­ping with the brown wa­ters that had rav­aged the whole val­ley. A ver­i­ta­ble ar­ma­da of dump trucks, wa­ter trucks, back­hoes and bull­doz­ers had been dis­patched to the area to help with the clean-up.

In­con­gru­ous­ly, I saw a lo­cal busi­ness own­er on the Main Road wav­ing a na­tion­al flag with glee on his face as a con­voy of un­marked po­lice ve­hi­cles, sirens blar­ing, rushed through the sea of ochre mud to­wards Rich Plain, where a man had been killed in the flood­ing. I am thank­ful to God that my daugh­ter and her beloved grand­ma were safe; I am still reel­ing from the lev­el of de­struc­tion oth­er hous­es so near­by had suf­fered. There, but for the grace of a small hill... I don't know that any­body is sur­prised at this lat­est dis­as­ter. Cer­tain­ly, flood­ing in Trinidad is noth­ing new, so much so that the head of the PP Gov­ern­ment left her swear­ing-in and went straight to a flood­ed area in cen­tral Trinidad on May 25, 2010. Jack Warn­er pledged to fix the drainage sit­u­a­tion when he came in­to of­fice as Min­is­ter of Works. And yet, the tor­rents of wa­ter keep com­ing down, and keep de­stroy­ing lives and prop­er­ty. Noth­ing ef­fec­tive has been done. "The riv­er cours­es are not clean," not­ed me­te­o­rol­o­gist B Ram­datt in the Sun­day Guardian. "Even if you have 10mm of rain­fall, there would have been flood­ing." Re­call­ing the down­pour I heard in the wee hours of Sat­ur­day morn­ing, I know this was more than a few mil­lime­tres of rain. The hills around the Diego Mar­tin Val­ley are scarred with land­slips, some of which were still block­ing the Morne Co­co Road in­to Mar­aval on Sun­day morn­ing when I went to col­lect my oth­er daugh­ter at her friend's home. The ar­ma­da was at work there too, along with Cepep work­ers dig­ging sludge out of the dri­ve­ways back­hoes couldn't reach.

In Mar­aval, Diego Mar­tin and ar­eas west, gates hung askew, and fences jammed with de­bris tes­ti­fied how high the wa­ters had raged. Walls have fall­en, homes and roads have been washed away, and lives lost. This is a tragedy, but one which could have been mit­i­gat­ed by prop­er man­age­ment. "We were flood­ed out be­fore, but nev­er like this," said a Chu­ma Mon­ka Av­enue, Pe­tit Val­ley, res­i­dent in the Sun­day Guardian. "Now lives are be­ing tak­en. The Gov­ern­ment has to crack down on peo­ple who are clear­ing lands to build hous­es." His words are like­ly to fall on deaf ears, be­cause even a school­child has been taught the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the clear­ing of hill­sides and flood­ing in the val­leys. We know, and have known for years, that the in­creas­ing and un­reg­u­lat­ed de­vel­op­ment of hous­ing in these ar­eas leads to flood­ing. And it does not take a ge­nius to see that in­ad­e­quate or poor­ly main­tained drainage cou­pled with less veg­e­ta­tion on the hills will in­evitably lead to the kinds of dis­as­ters of Sat­ur­day gone. And yet, de­vel­op­ment goes on, flood­ing goes on; we mop up, patch the shat­tered road­ways, hand out ham­pers and tem­po­rary hous­ing and sit tight for the next dis­as­ter. I con­grat­u­late Keshorn Wal­cott, Lalonde Gor­don, the men's 4 x 400m and 4 x 100m re­lay teams for their vic­to­ries. I al­so con­grat­u­late all the oth­er T&T Olympians, whether or not they won medals, be­cause to at­tend the Olympics as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of one's coun­try is an ho­n­our not light­ly be­stowed. I wish their cel­e­bra­tion par­ty didn't need­less­ly take away a whole day of na­tion­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and I wish it hadn't fall­en on such a grim day for my neigh­bours. But this is T&T; work over, back to fete.