Kali­fa Clyne

Chair­man of the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Nafeesa Mo­hammed, says cit­i­zens need to be more "green con­scious" when de­vel­op­ing hill­sides in or­der to avoid sit­u­a­tions like Sat­ur­day's dev­as­tat­ing floods in north­west Trinidad.At the same time Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing said while teams were en­gaged in de­silt­ing drains in the af­ter­math of Sat­ur­day's floods, the onus was on cit­i­zens to take pre­cau­tions when build­ing their homes.

On Sat­ur­day, while sev­er­al parts of T&T were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sun­ny weath­er, ar­eas, such as Wood­brook, Co­corite, Mar­aval and St.Ann's, were lit­er­al­ly un­der­wa­ter af­ter hours of rain.Aside from dam­age to homes and loss of per­son­al be­long­ings, a wall, es­ti­mat­ed by Min­is­ter of Works Jack Warn­er as cost­ing $2 mil­lion, fell at the Trinidad Coun­try Club, Mar­aval.In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Lee Sing said the city cor­po­ra­tion, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er State agen­cies, would fo­cus on ar­eas cru­cial to keep­ing wa­ter out of the city, such as St. James and Ari­api­ta Av­enue.

"Much more at­ten­tion must be paid to drainage and in­stalling gut­ter­ing on hill­sides," he added.He said many cit­i­zens had been af­fect­ed but sin­gled out a home in Hard­ing Place, Co­corite, which had been filled with wa­ter on Sat­ur­day.Lee Sing said the cor­po­ra­tion would at­tempt to as­sist the home­own­er re­gard­ing dam­aged items in the home.He said he was pleased with the re­silience of the res­i­dents.

"The re­silience of our peo­ple is re­mark­able. Short­ly af­ter the rain on Sat­ur­day com­mu­ni­ties had come out to clean the streets and as­sist neigh­bours in af­fect­ed ar­eas," Lee Sing said.Mo­hammed said up un­til late Sun­day clean-up ef­forts were un­der­way in St Ann's and Cas­cade.She blamed the floods on bad en­vi­ron­men­tal prac­tices and un­pre­dictable weath­er.

Mean­while, a re­lease yes­ter­day from the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) as­sured cit­i­zens that while the el­der­ly, dis­abled and preg­nant women were of the high­est pri­or­i­ty, it worked to en­sure all those ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by the floods re­ceived as­sis­tance.The re­lease stat­ed that the three af­fect­ed re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions - Port-of-Spain, San Juan/ Laven­tille and Diego Mar­tin - along with groups from CEPEP and the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture were con­duct­ing clean-up op­er­a­tions in af­fect­ed ar­eas.

It said the Min­istry of the Peo­ple had been man­dat­ed to work with af­fect­ed res­i­dents to com­plete dam­age and loss as­sess­ments.

Ad­vi­so­ry

The ODPM has ad­vised cit­i­zens to take the fol­low­ing pre­cau­tions:

Wash down any ar­eas of the home that came in­to con­tact with flood wa­ters with mix­ture of house­hold bleach and wa­ter (25 per cent bleach to wa­ter so­lu­tion) to re­duce sur­face dam­age and health prob­lems;

Wash and dry every­thing you pos­si­bly can af­ter a flood. Wash and dry soaked bed­ding, tow­els and any items of cloth­ing us­ing the hot sani­tis­ing cy­cle on your wash­ing ma­chine;

Clean all af­fect­ed sur­faces thor­ough­ly. Wash all sur­face area, such as walls, cab­i­nets, base­ment floors, with the bleach so­lu­tion; and

Have a pro­fes­sion­al in­spect your plumb­ing and elec­tri­cal sys­tems and re­place all fil­ters and switch­es.