With Trinidad placed un­der a Trop­i­cal Storm Watch yes­ter­day, sev­er­al res­i­dents flocked to sev­er­al sand­bag dis­tri­b­u­tion sites in Tu­na­puna and Mt Hope in prepa­ra­tion for bad weath­er as­so­ci­at­ed with the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Beryl.

At the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion’s (TPRC) trans­port yard on Mar­ket Road, off Ma­coya Road, there was a queue of cars at the en­trance to the yard as res­i­dents wait­ed for their share of sand­bags.

A back­hoe was al­so de­ployed to the yard to help load the grav­el in­to trucks and vans.

St He­le­na res­i­dent Teeluck­ram Bis­s­ram said while there were not strong show­ers in his neigh­bour­hood yes­ter­day, he did not want to take any chances.

Re­fer­ring to the 2018 floods in Pi­ar­co, Orop­une and sur­round­ing ar­eas, Bis­s­ram said he want­ed to be pre­pared for any de­vel­op­ment over the next 24 hours.

“It floods a lot where I am.

“I was sup­posed to take 16 (sand­bags), but I on­ly have room for 11 in my car.

“The last time there were floods, the wa­ter got up to two feet in­side my house and every­thing was de­stroyed, so I’m hop­ing the sand­bags make a dif­fer­ence,” he said. An­oth­er Tu­na­puna res­i­dent who asked not to be named said she took the time to get sand­bags in the event of any rain­fall lat­er Sun­day night.

She said while she was keep­ing abreast of weath­er con­di­tions from the Met Of­fice and me­dia brief­in­gs, she was not pre­pared to take any chances.

“I rather be safe than sor­ry.

“Whole morn­ing I lis­ten­ing to the ra­dio and keep­ing my phone charged for any oth­er bul­letins out there, but I don’t want the rain to come down heav­i­ly lat­er tonight and I don’t have a sin­gle sand­bag at home,” she said

On Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon heavy winds dam­aged the roof of a house in Arou­ca.

Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) chair­man Josi­ah Austin vis­it­ed the area and spoke with the af­fect­ed fam­i­ly.

At the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion’s (SJL­RC) Mt Hope of­fice, off the Uri­ah But­ler High­way, work­ers were al­so busy prepar­ing sand­bags, which were trans­port­ed for dis­tri­b­u­tion at their Aranguez of­fice.

Act­ing Road Of­fi­cer I Ri­ta Hold­er said the num­ber of peo­ple reach­ing out to the cor­po­ra­tion for sand­bags sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased fol­low­ing a joint min­is­te­r­i­al me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing.