Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

On April 25 this year, just un­der 12 hours of rain­fall left sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties across north­east­ern Trinidad un­der­wa­ter.

While high-wa­ter res­cues oc­curred for those dri­ving in­to flood wa­ters, those trapped in their homes were ne­glect­ed, ac­cord­ing to Mandil­lon Road, San­gre Grande res­i­dents.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area where Nicole Eligon and Nicole Ali were trapped due to what they said was the worst flood­ing they’ve ex­pe­ri­enced, sur­pass­ing what was ob­served in 2018.

They both left their homes dur­ing the morn­ing, see­ing the wa­ter brim­ming in the near­by stream, ex­pect­ing the wa­ter lev­els to de­crease. Ali ex­plained that giv­en Trinidad and To­ba­go is still in the dry sea­son, they were not ex­pect­ing the vol­ume of rain that fell.

When they re­turned, ac­cord­ing to Ali, “The wa­ter was right be­low my gallery. We were like, ‘What, so?” She [Eligon] parked the car on the road and went through the wa­ter; by the time she did that, she couldn’t come back out.

Eligon re­count­ed, “While I was walk­ing through the wa­ter, I am a short per­son, about five feet-four, and the wa­ter was just un­der my breast walk­ing through the wa­ter. So I went in­side and bathed, and I went to lie down be­cause, with the rain, I thought it would go down. But it just kept ris­ing.”

Be­tween sev­en and 10 feet of wa­ter swamped both prop­er­ties, spilling over from a large ad­ja­cent stream di­rect­ly in­to their yards and, now, homes.

Once Eligon re­alised she was trapped, the calls to emer­gency of­fi­cials be­gan, with rel­a­tives plead­ing for help on so­cial me­dia.

Ali said, “We call every­body. We call every­body. Every­body was say­ing no equip­ment or no man­pow­er. Fire ser­vices came, and they said they called some­thing from San­ta Cruz, and those peo­ple were sup­posed to show up. We nev­er saw them.”

In a dis­as­ter, there are many peo­ple we can call on for help, with hot­lines for each mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion’s dis­as­ter man­age­ment unit (DMU), the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS), the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and oth­ers. So who should you call?

Eligon and Ali say they have re­ceived lit­tle as­sis­tance from the Gov­ern­ment to date. Their homes, three weeks lat­er, are still damp, with a mound of de­stroyed fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances scat­tered in front of their years. If you would like to help, you can con­tact Nicole Ali at 332-1126

Nicole Ali, left, and Nicole Eligon, who were affected by major flooding on April 25, 2023.

Kalain Hosein

The Na­tion­al Re­sponse Frame­work

The Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Frame­work in T&T has mul­ti­ple lev­els, but it first starts with you. In a dis­as­ter, the onus of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty lies with you to be pre­pared for haz­ardous events be­fore it oc­curs. How­ev­er, when there are ten feet of wa­ter in your yard, or your roof is blown off, there is very lit­tle that you can do.

This is con­sid­ered a Lev­el 1 emer­gency, which first re­spon­der agen­cies like the TTPS, the TTFS, and mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions can ad­dress. When a dis­as­ter man­age­ment unit can’t ef­fec­tive­ly re­spond to a dis­as­ter, some co-or­di­na­tion oc­curs at the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment lev­el.

How­ev­er, when na­tion­al-lev­el re­sources must be co­or­di­nat­ed, the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment is the na­tion’s co-or­di­nat­ing dis­as­ter agency. This would in­clude li­ais­ing with arms of T&T’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus like the Air Guard, Coast Guard, De­fence Force, non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, and oth­er gov­ern­men­tal stake­hold­ers.

When all the coun­try’s dis­as­ter man­age­ment sys­tems are over­whelmed, and the Pres­i­dent de­clares a na­tion­al emer­gency, the ODPM be­comes the fo­cal point for re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies to sup­port re­lief and re­cov­ery ef­forts. At this point, the Na­tion­al Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre is ac­ti­vat­ed, co­or­di­nat­ing as­sis­tance in tan­dem with the Min­istries of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, For­eign Af­fairs, and Fi­nance.

In a per­fect world, a call to your re­spec­tive DMU should reach the ap­pro­pri­ate lev­el of re­sponse, with suf­fi­cient co-or­di­na­tion be­hind the scenes by au­thor­i­ties. How­ev­er, time and time again, we see this frame­work break down, which was the case of Mandil­lon Road, San­gre Grande.

Ali and Eligon called the ODPM, the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion’s DMU, and the TTFS, and there was no ad­e­quate re­sponse. The TTFS was the on­ly agency that phys­i­cal­ly vis­it­ed the in­un­dat­ed hous­es on April 25, but, ac­cord­ing to Ali, they did not have the equip­ment to res­cue Eligon.