Rhon­dor Dowlat

Sev­er­al parts of Cen­tral Trinidad ex­pe­ri­enced flash flood­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing due to heavy con­sis­tent rain­fall overnight.The rains con­tin­ued for most of the day.Some of the ar­eas that ex­pe­ri­enced flash flood­ing in­clude Ch­agua­nas, Chan­der­nagore, Ko­rea Vil­lage, Brick­field, Wa­ter­loo, Bank Vil­lage, Beau­car­ro, Freeport, Cal­cut­ta and Cou­va.Speak­ing with T&T Guardian via tele­phone, Wa­ter­loo res­i­dent Bas­deo Jaimungals­ingh called on the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to work quick­ly in get­ting the drains in the dis­trict cleared of de­bris.

"Every time a lit­tle rain falls, the flood comes up. Too much of the drains and canals are clogged with bot­tles, food box­es, branch­es and noth­ing do­ing to have all the wa­ter­ways cleared up," Jaimungals­ingh said."This morn­ing (yes­ter­day) I had to go to the bank and do some oth­er busi­ness and I could not go nowhere be­cause no taxis work­ing on the road be­cause of the rain and flood."A re­lease is­sued by the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Of­fice at 8.37 am yes­ter­day ad­vised that T&T was not un­der a trop­i­cal storm threat, watch or warn­ing.

It added that the rains were as­so­ci­at­ed with a Trop­i­cal Wave, which was in­ter­act­ing with the In­ter-Trop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ) re­sult­ing in cloudy to over­cast con­di­tions with mod­er­ate to heavy show­ers and thun­der­show­ers."The pos­si­bil­i­ty of land­slides/land­slips and lo­calised street/flash flood­ing may oc­cur in heavy down­pours. Gusty winds can be ex­pect­ed in the vicin­i­ty of show­ers and thun­der­show­ers."

The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness Man­age­ment (ODPM), as the lead co­or­di­na­tor of emer­gency man­age­ment, in a bul­letin is­sued at 10.15 am, put the first re­spon­der agen­cies (Fire Ser­vice, De­fence Force and the mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions) on alert.The ODPM has re­mind­ed all af­fect­ed cit­i­zens to con­tact its cus­tomer care cen­tre at 511 in the event of an emer­gency.

Speak­ing with T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Hen­ry Awong, gave the as­sur­ance that the cor­po­ra­tion was putting a num­ber of mea­sures in place to min­imise, if not, al­le­vi­ate, flash flood­ing with­in the re­gion, in­clud­ing along the Cou­va Main Road."We have an on­go­ing drainage pro­gramme where a num­ber of the wa­ter cours­es and trib­u­taries are be­ing cleared. A num­ber of con­tracts have al­ready been award­ed for this project."

Awong said al­ready the Cou­va and Ex­change Rivers had been cleared of all de­bris.He re­cent­ly con­clud­ed a tour of all sites in the re­gion, along with of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Works, High­way Di­vi­sion, Drainage Di­vi­sion and the PURE pro­gramme.