Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

“We are in the rainy sea­son and in the rainy sea­son we must ex­pect rain.”

 That was among Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan’s replies in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day fol­low­ing a query from UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal.

MP Mooni­lal had sought de­tails of ur­gent clear­ing/clean­ing work which will be tak­en to as­sist res­i­dents af­fect­ed by Tues­day’s thun­der­storm, and dev­as­tat­ing de­struc­tion and to pre­vent an­oth­er in­ci­dent and hu­man suf­fer­ing.

Sinanan said, “Based on the ques­tion posed on the ‘dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing and de­struc­tion and hu­man suf­fer­ing’, I don’t know where that came from. (Tues­day) we got some flash flood­ing and with­in one hour the wa­ter re­ced­ed. Yes, some de­bris came down and as of half an hour ago I was in most of the ar­eas where that hap­pened and it’s al­ready cleaned. So I don’t know where the  ‘hu­man suf­fer­ing’ and so ...

 “I just want to re­mind the MP, we are in the rainy sea­son, and in the rainy sea­son, we must ex­pect rain. What hap­pened (Tues­day) was a large vol­ume of wa­ter that was an­tic­i­pat­ed based on the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al weath­er pat­terns. That re­sult­ed in some se­vere flash flood­ing in cer­tain parts of the is­land.”

Sinanan added, “The re­ports that I have no rivers broke their banks. There was some over­top­ping in the Diego Mar­tin area which is nor­mal with that vol­ume of wa­ter. So in terms of  ‘hu­man suf­fer­ing’ and so, I sym­pa­thise with the low-ly­ing ar­eas where we do get flood­ing from time to time. So the min­istry will con­tin­ue on its pro­gramme of de­silt­ing and im­prov­ing the in­fra­struc­ture in Trinidad so it can cater to the new norm brought up­on us by cli­mate change, high sea lev­el rise, and the ab­nor­mal amount of rain­fall that we’re get­ting at this time.”

Mooni­lal cit­ed a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle on storm dam­age rip­ping off roofs, traf­fic night­mares, and flood “blows”. Not­ing the min­istry re­ceived $167 mil­lion in the mid-year re­view, Mooni­lal asked what projects were on­go­ing in the ar­eas re­cent­ly flood­ed that would pre­vent fur­ther flood­ing in the event of rain­fall.

Sinanan said, “Just to clar­i­fy, rain­fall and clean­ing drains have noth­ing to do with roofs blow­ing off. That has to do with wind. We have no con­trol over the wind.

“The min­istry has a very ag­gres­sive drainage pro­gramme on­go­ing where we’re de­silt­ing wa­ter cours­es, re­build­ing banks, up­grad­ing pumps and gates and there are sev­er­al dif­fer­ent as­pects, and that mon­ey will be spent there.”

He said, “But I need to in­di­cate, flood­ing has to do with the vol­ume of rain­fall and the ca­pac­i­ty of the chan­nels, so as a gov­ern­ment we’ll do our part but we have no con­trol over the new norm–the new weath­er pat­tern that’s af­fect­ing the en­tire globe ... just this morn­ing. I don’t know if the MPs look at the in­ter­na­tion­al news. It’s hap­pen­ing around the world and we will not be spared but all hands must be on deck and we must not use the flood as a part of the  pol­i­tics in T&T.”

On UNC MP Van­dana Mo­hit’s queries on im­me­di­ate emer­gency mech­a­nisms for flood­ed res­i­dents, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said there was al­most im­me­di­ate run-off, and up to yes­ter­day the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry had not re­ceived re­ports of peo­ple in need of as­sis­tance.

 If such re­ports are re­ceived, So­cial De­vel­op­ment is in a po­si­tion to de­ter­mine the ex­tent of the re­cov­ery need­ed and the min­istry will re­spond ac­cord­ing­ly, Robin­son-Reg­is added. Where roofs blew off, tar­pau­lins and clean­ing sup­plies were pro­vid­ed, she said. She added that the PNM “wasn’t in the habit of  en­cour­ag­ing flood pol­i­tics.”