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Friday, July 11, 2025

Put disaster relief in hands of army

by

20140711

Point Fortin may­or Clyde Paul says dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness in T&T leaves much to be de­sired, af­ter a dozen fam­i­lies in the bor­ough were in tur­moil due to Thurs­day's bad weath­er.In five of Point Fortin's sev­en com­mu­ni­ties, fam­i­lies spent yes­ter­day morn­ing re­pair­ing and clean­ing their homes af­ter roofs were blown off, trees came crash­ing down and rain blew in­to their homes.

By noon yes­ter­day, the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion were de­liv­er­ing food ham­pers, mat­tress­es and tar­pau­lins to af­fect­ed res­i­dents, who said they were yet to the see of­fi­cials from the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM). T&TEC was restor­ing pow­er to homes where lines were bro­ken and fire­fight­ers had al­ready helped re­move up­root­ed trees.

Speak­ing at his of­fice yes­ter­day, Paul lament­ed that lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies were not equipped to deal with dis­as­ters. He said a lack of re­sources and train­ing were ev­i­dent when­ev­er there was an emer­gency."The lo­cal gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties do not have the kind of re­sources, nor fa­cil­i­ties, nor train­ing to act on an emer­gency. That is a re­sult of poor plan­ning. Every coun­try you go to where there was a dis­as­ter, you would see that the first peo­ple to re­spond was the army.

"The ap­proach has al­ways been wrong when it comes to dis­as­ter man­age­ment in this coun­try. We say dis­as­ter man­age­ment, but this ought to be more of an emer­gency man­age­ment is­sue. A dis­as­ter brings about an emer­gency and, there­fore, we ought to act as an emer­gency op­er­a­tion."T&T has not ex­pe­ri­enced hur­ri­cane con­di­tions since 2004 when part of Hur­ri­cane Ivan's tail struck To­ba­go, killing one per­son and leav­ing $4.9 mil­lion in dam­age. De­spite lit­tle rain­fall yes­ter­day, it was a trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence for many.

At the home of Sam­daye Singh, her son Prem­nath Singh, who lives to the back, said that around 2.30 pm, he heard glass break­ing at the house. As he looked out­side, he saw half of the roof be­ing torn out."When I walked up the hill to check, I saw all the lou­vres at the back of the house blow­ing off." Her grand­son Jesse was home, he said, and had just sat down to watch TV. "My mom was at a friend's house two hous­es away. Jesse had to stand in a cor­ner of the house where the roof hadn't blown off un­til the rain passed," Singh said.

A tar­pau­lin was placed over the roof, but the Singhs had se­vere dam­age to the walls of their home, fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances.Though the coun­try is not ful­ly in­to the rainy sea­son, scores of peo­ple in south Trinidad have been left reel­ing from just two hours of rain and strong wind.

Singh said, "If we can get this weath­er now and the hur­ri­cane sea­son hasn't ful­ly start­ed yet, we have to look out for more dras­tic winds. We have to ex­pect this be­cause of cli­mate change, but I don't think we're pre­pared as yet. Just re­cent­ly a tree fell on the tank by me with an­oth­er one hang­ing over. I called the ODPM hot­line and they nev­er came. I had to hire peo­ple to cut the trees. They should put prop­er sys­tems in place."


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