Michelle Loubon

Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing says T&T?should be­gin to se­ri­ous­ly pre­pare for oth­er types of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters-es­pe­cial­ly earth­quakes. He made the com­ment in re­sponse to Sat­ur­day's del­uge which left a trail of de­struc­tion in west­ern Trinidad. Lee Sing said: "It is a most un­for­tu­nate ex­pe­ri­ence we have had with Moth­er Na­ture. "When we got up, we (T&T) did not think we would have to deal with such a dis­as­ter. We lost two lives. We should start to build build­ings that would with­stand nat­ur­al dis­as­ters of all types...es­pe­cial­ly earth­quakes."

He added:?"We should de­mand the ap­pro­pri­ate work be done to get build­ings ready for earth­quakes. "We should have sci­en­tif­ic peo­ple with the knowl­edge and skills to go in­to peo­ple's homes and do what is nec­es­sary to re­fit the build­ings. We should be pre­pared should such a dis­as­ter oc­cur. We must take yes­ter­day's tri­als and use it to our best ad­van­tage." Ze­ro­ing on the flood­ing, Lee Sing said it was ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary to re­turn to "retro fit­ting or rather re-en­gi­neer­ing in terms of drainage."

It was manda­to­ry since the drains were tasked to ac­com­mo­date an ad­di­tion­al vol­ume of wa­ter from heavy rains. Lee Sing said the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion worked in tan­dem with the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. He said:?"We were able to as­sess what we had to do in the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion. We were able to im­me­di­ate­ly as­sign the greater amount of our re­sources to the Diego Mar­tin Cor­po­ra­tion. We as­signed 60 per cent of man­pow­er and re­sources."