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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Flooding leaves scores stranded

by

20160715

One San Rafael fam­i­ly is now tem­porar­i­ly re­sid­ing at the San Rafael Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre as their home was hit the hard­est by flood­ing in the area in the past two days.

This was con­firmed by La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Maxi Cuffie.

Cuffie, who toured sev­er­al flood-af­fect­ed ar­eas yes­ter­day, said he has or­gan­ised as­sis­tance for the fam­i­ly from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness Man­age­ment (ODPM).

"We are tak­ing care of them as an emer­gency case. They are very bad­ly off, they were hit the hard­est by the ris­ing flood wa­ters," Cuffie said.

Al­so, at Green­vale, La Hor­quet­ta, and Chin Chin Road, Las Lo­mas, sev­er­al res­i­dents were strand­ed at their homes be­cause of the ris­ing wa­ters.

Sev­er­al parts of Pi­ar­co were un­der six feet in flood wa­ters, in­clud­ing the in­ter­sec­tion be­tween Gold­en Grove Road and the Ca­roni South Bank Road and the end of the run­way at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Scores of mo­torists were forced to use al­ter­na­tive routes as the roads be­came im­pass­able with the ris­ing flood­wa­ters.

Cuffie said he be­gan to get calls from as ear­ly as 3.30 am yes­ter­day of the ris­ing flood wa­ters and threats to homes. He said he then de­cid­ed to tour the af­fect­ed ar­eas so that he could see for him­self what the res­i­dents were be­ing faced with.

It is be­lieved that ma­jor wa­ter­cours­es were not cleared of all de­bris, hence the cause for the flood­ing woes ex­pe­ri­enced in the rur­al east­ern com­mu­ni­ties.

How­ev­er, Cuffie said that he will be close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the promised re­me­di­al works to be car­ried out by the Min­istry of Works and the re­spec­tive re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

"In the case of Green­vale, we iden­ti­fied the prob­lem there as the flood­gate which has not been op­er­at­ing prop­er­ly and re­al­ly should have been re­moved," Cuffie said.

"My im­me­di­ate con­cern, how­ev­er, is to bring re­lief to res­i­dents and com­menc­ing works to re­move all clogs to wa­ter­cours­es," he added.

Cuffie was ac­com­pa­nied by the chair­man and CEO of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, the ODPM, the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) and the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

Brazil res­i­dent, on­ly iden­ti­fied as Kaz­im, said he is up­set with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties over the flood­ing woes.

"Not enough work was done to have the drains and rivers cleared. Them peo­ple does on­ly wait for thing to hap­pen then to start to clean but that shouldn't be. Every­body know the rains com­ing will pre­pare for it, don't wait for we to be flood out then to look to run to our help. Fix the prob­lems be­fore," Kaz­im said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent at Pi­ar­co, Shar­maine Per­sadie, de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as ter­ri­ble and frus­trat­ing. "it frus­trat­ing be­cause no one could get their things done be­cause of the flood; they are ma­rooned. I re­al sor­ry for the peo­ple whose homes are flood­ed out be­cause that is a dif­fer­ent lev­el of frus­tra­tion."

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that the flood­ing in Green­vale wors­ened and that sev­er­al homes were now un­der wa­ter. How­ev­er, pres­i­dent of the Green­vale Park Com­mu­ni­ty Or­gan­i­sa­tion, Kir­leen Boodoos­ingh, said pumps were be­ing brought in­to the area to pump out the wa­ter from the com­mu­ni­ty.

"The area is al­most in­ac­ces­si­ble but there are teams work­ing to have the wa­ter pumped out. The res­i­dents are hop­ing that lat­er on tonight or to­mor­row morn­ing (Sat­ur­day morn­ing) the wa­ter lev­els would be at its low­est due to the ef­forts be­ing un­der­tak­en," Boodoos­ingh said.

Chair­man of the cor­po­ra­tion, Hen­ry Awong, iden­ti­fied five ma­jor flood­ing ar­eas in his re­gion–Wel­come; Las Lo­mas; Cunu­pia; Chin Chin Road; and Brazil, in San Rafael.

Awong said the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit was present­ly fin­ish­ing mop­ping-up op­er­a­tions at five homes in the Chin Chin area.

He said 15 mat­tress­es and sev­er­al ham­pers were al­so giv­en out to those in need.

"The cor­po­ra­tion has been car­ry­ing out clear­ing and clean­ing of wa­ter cours­es, we are al­so work­ing along with the Drainage Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Works to have ma­jor wa­ter cours­es cleaned," Awong said.

He added that work is on­go­ing on the Ca­paro Riv­er. "How­ev­er, we await work to start on the oth­er ma­jor wa­ter cours­es like the Hon­da Riv­er, Guaracara Riv­er, Di­ana Riv­er and the Clax­ton Bay Riv­er."

Met Of­fice ad­vi­so­ry

Yes­ter­day at 2.32 pm, the T&T Met Of­fice up­dat­ed its river­ine flood alert for Trinidad.

It said that over the last 18 hours, most of the re­cent rain­fall ac­tiv­i­ty was as­so­ci­at­ed with an In­ter-Trop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ). "As op­posed to street and flash flood­ing, river­ine flood­ing is more pro­long and wide­spread."

Re­ports from the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency said wa­ter lev­els in the na­tion's ma­jor rivers are ap­proach­ing thresh­old lev­els as a re­sult of ex­pect­ed run-off from the cur­rent rain­fall event.

Al­though wa­ter lev­els in the pri­ma­ry Ca­roni Riv­er re­main con­tained at this time, it is nev­er­the­less threat­en­ing­ly high.

Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal fore­casts and da­ta ob­tained from mumer­i­cal weath­er pre­dic­tion mod­els in­di­cat­ed that fur­ther rain­fall ac­tiv­i­ty is ex­pect­ed over the next 12 to 18 hours with rain­fall ac­cu­mu­la­tion an­tic­i­pat­ed to be be­tween 20 and 40 mil­lime­tres.

Cit­i­zens in gen­er­al, and those re­sid­ing in the Ca­roni Riv­er Basin in par­tic­u­lar, are asked to be on the alert for ris­ing riv­er lev­els and pos­si­ble over­spill.


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