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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Christmas Disaster

... 18 Dead in 3 Is­lands

by

20131225

A Christ­mas Day trail of death and de­struc­tion caused by a pow­er­ful weath­er sys­tem swept across the East­ern Caribbean is­lands of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, St Lu­cia and Do­mini­ca yes­ter­day, leav­ing 18 dead and sev­er­al oth­ers miss­ing up to press time.Heavy and pro­longed rain­fall caused by a trough, with strong winds turn­ing in a counter-clock­wise di­rec­tion, re­sult­ed in dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing which dam­aged homes, col­lapsed bridges and trig­gered pow­er out­ages in the is­lands.

T&T, which was just at the south­ern tip of the trough and yes­ter­day ex­pe­ri­enced sim­i­lar weath­er in South and Cen­tral, was on full alert for any dis­as­ter.But by ear­ly evening, me­te­o­rol­o­gist Gary Ben­jamin said the bad weath­er ap­peared to have abat­ed.He said there would have been some resid­ual cloudi­ness last night from dur­ing the day and light show­ers in a few ar­eas but a gen­er­al im­prove­ment in weath­er con­di­tions.

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Met Of­fice and the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) were close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day and all the rel­e­vant agen­cies were on full alert, the Guardian was told.Ben­jamin told the T & T Guardian while there was driz­zle in Port-of-Spain, it rained heav­i­ly in oth­er parts of the coun­try. He said vis­i­bil­i­ty was at times low at Pi­ar­co and there was wide­spread cloudi­ness.

He said T&T was just at the end of the rainy sea­son and ow­ing to heavy rain­fall over the last two weeks, the ground was wa­ter­logged. Pro­longed rain­fall could cause flash flood­ing in prone ar­eas, he said. "Some abate­ment is ex­pect­ed by this evening or tonight."Ben­jamin said the Met Of­fice re­ceived no flood re­ports yes­ter­day but said if the rain­fall per­sist­ed, peo­ple liv­ing in flood-prone ar­eas need­ed to watch out and those in high ar­eas should look out for land­slides.

Dr Stephen Ram­roop, CEO of the ODPM, said from as ear­ly as 4.45 am Christ­mas morn­ing, when he looked at the dev­as­ta­tion in Do­mini­ca, he be­gan speak­ing with his coun­ter­parts in the Caribbean.Ram­roop, a di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA), said things were in place in T&T in the event of any dis­as­ter here.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said all agen­cies were ful­ly op­er­a­tional but up to yes­ter­day there was noth­ing to in­di­cate the sit­u­a­tion here would be as se­vere as in the oth­er is­lands.Grif­fith said his min­istry was busy try­ing to reach the gov­ern­ments of the af­fect­ed coun­tries yes­ter­day to of­fer as­sis­tance."We are of­fer­ing our as­sis­tance with se­cu­ri­ty and to help co-or­di­nate sup­port from oth­er coun­tries," he said.

Gon­salves re­turns home

St Vin­cent Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves, who had gone to Rome, Italy to meet Pope Fran­cis and was spend­ing Christ­mas in Lon­don, was forced to cut short his vis­it and re­turn home as the death toll on the is­land reached sev­en yes­ter­day. Gon­salves is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to­day.Ac­cord­ing to CANA re­ports, up to yes­ter­day emer­gency res­cue teams said they had re­cov­ered sev­en bod­ies, in­clud­ing those of a two-year-old ba­by boy and his 18-year-old sis­ter.

Three oth­ers were miss­ing and feared dead from the heavy flood­ing. In St Lu­cia three were re­port­ed­ly killed and eight in Do­mini­ca. St Vin­cent, Do­mini­ca and St Lu­cia were the hard­est hit coun­tries. There were re­ports of wide­spread dam­age to roads, build­ings and bridges on the is­lands.Sev­er­al peo­ple were trapped in their homes and the ET Joshua Air­port was closed be­cause of flood­ing.

St Lu­cia tragedy

St Lu­cia News On­line yes­ter­day re­port­ed that a po­lice of­fi­cer was killed when a wall fell on him while he was try­ing to help peo­ple caught in the floods. There were al­so un­con­firmed re­ports of two oth­er deaths.In Do­mini­ca, of­fi­cials said eight peo­ple died, in­clud­ing an 18-year-old col­lege stu­dent. One man was re­port­ed miss­ing.

News re­ports said tor­ren­tial rains on Christ­mas Eve "turned the stretch of road from Cas­tle Com­fort to Roseau in­to a night­mare of mud, dirty wa­ter, snarled traf­fic, ner­vous pedes­tri­ans and flood­ed homes.Re­ports said Do­mini­ca was crowd­ed with hol­i­day tourists.


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