Se­vere thun­der­storms caused flash and street floods in parts of south and cen­tral Trinidad yes­ter­day evening, caus­ing gird­lock traf­fic and leav­ing some res­i­dents and com­muters trapped in hous­es and cars.

The in­clement weath­er in­clud­ed a fun­nel cloud that de­vel­oped in the Gulf of Paria and was spot­ted from as far east as Princes Town. It touched down in the open fields of Wood­land as a tor­na­do. How­ev­er, no dam­age was re­port­ed from it.

With­in a three hour pe­ri­od, be­tween 3.30 pm and 6.30 pm, four to five inch­es of rain fell in San Fer­nan­do, trig­ger­ing sig­nif­i­cant flood­ing when the Cipero and Vista­bel­la rivers burst their banks. The Cipero riv­er burst its banks along Cross Cross­ing and Gulf View. It al­so burst in Green Acres, flood­ing sev­er­al homes there.

Fur­ther east, in Union Hall, res­i­dents were trapped in their homes by floods and fire of­fi­cials had to res­cue three peo­ple who were trapped in a ve­hi­cle on the Gol­con­da Con­nec­tor Road near VM­COTT. A near­by restau­rant, Dim Sum King, was af­fect­ed with sev­er­al pa­trons trapped in­side the build­ing.

Af­fect­ed ar­eas with­in the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion in­clud­ed Blitz Av­enue and sur­round­ing ar­eas in Co­coyea, as well as Cir­cu­lar Road, Rush­worth Street and Freel­ing Street.

Princes Town and Debe, to a less­er ex­tent, were al­so af­fect­ed. There was flood­ing on the S.S. Erin Road in the vicin­i­ty of the Debe Mar­ket.

Late yes­ter­day evening, the flood wa­ters moved across the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion just be­fore Debe, mak­ing it im­pass­able with wa­ter cross­ing the north­bound lane.

In cen­tral Trinidad, street flood­ing oc­curred in Ed­in­burgh 500 and Char­liewil­le but quick­ly sub­sided

Among those ma­rooned by the floods was Ken­rick Ser­rette, the UNC can­di­date for Les Ef­forts East/Cipero, who was on a cam­paign walk­a­bout near the Rush­worth Street NP Gas Sta­tion. Serette, who got drenched in the down­pour, had to as­sist res­i­dent Lynette Car­by, who had gone to the gas sta­tion to make some pur­chas­es

“Wa­ter reached the plat­form and no one could go in or out,” he said. “Any time it rains for 15, or 20 min­utes of rain they get this im­pact.”

An ad­vi­so­ry from the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) late yes­ter­day con­firmed that there were at least 23 flood­ing in­ci­dents in com­mu­ni­ties with­in the city of San Fer­nan­do, the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. A land­slide oc­curred on the Pointe-a-Pierre Main Road near Palms Club.

The fore­cast from the T&T Met Ser­vice was for iso­lat­ed show­ers and thun­der­storms across both is­lands overnight, with rain­fall favour­ing To­ba­go.