Zi­co Co­zi­er

Ex­pect more rain to­day and be on the look­out for flash flood­ing in flood-prone ar­eas, ac­cord­ing to the Met Of­fice.In­clement weath­er was ex­pe­ri­enced over Trinidad and To­ba­go for most of yes­ter­day and ac­cord­ing to Sha­keer Baig, chief me­te­o­rol­o­gist at the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Of­fice (Met Of­fice), the weath­er was as a re­sult of the pas­sage of a low-lev­el trough and a mois­ture surge.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Baig said Trinidad had ex­pe­ri­enced more rain­fall than To­ba­go and cit­ed ar­eas in Trinidad that the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency had list­ed as hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced high­er rain­fall lev­el­s­They were San­gre Grande 16.6 ml, Moru­ga 23.8 ml, St Ann's 29.8 ml, Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port 30 ml and North Oropouche 76 mm."Rain­fall will con­tin­ue in­to tonight with vary­ing in­ten­si­ty and the cloudi­ness will con­tin­ue in­to to­mor­row," he said when asked what cit­i­zens should look out for to­day.

He warned that the quan­ti­ty of rain­fall ex­pe­ri­enced could lead to lo­calised street and flash flood­ing in some ar­eas. He al­so cau­tioned that the amount of rain­fall and al­ready sat­u­rat­ed soil could re­sult in rivers of mod­er­ate car­ry­ing ca­pac­i­ty be­com­ing over­whelmed.He called for all cit­i­zens to re­main alert."We ad­vise all cit­i­zens to be vig­i­lant and cau­tious as they con­duct their ac­tiv­i­ties and to con­tin­ue to pay at­ten­tion to the me­dia re­ports and oth­er in­fo em­a­nat­ing from the Met Of­fice," he added.

Chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Mar­tin Ter­ry Ron­don said the rains al­so led to a land­slide along the Paria Main Road, block­ing off res­i­dents of Grand Riv­iere and Matelot along the north­east coast.He said that to­day, a 39-year-old vil­lager, John Lewis, would be walk­ing from the site of the land­slide in Matelot to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, to draw at­ten­tion to the plight of the vil­lage.

Con­tact­ed for a re­sponse, CEO of Of­fice of the Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment Dr Stephen Ram­roop said the ODPM had not been in­formed of any dis­as­ter sit­u­a­tion in the area.He said: "If a road is im­pass­able, that is an event that must be dealt with by the lo­cal gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ty, in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Min­istry of Works. The first re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to en­gage the Min­istry of Works and their own cor­po­ra­tion to clear the road and make it pass­able for their own cit­i­zens.

"If per­sons are strand­ed and peo­ple can't get to them and the min­istries can't deal with it, they would have to call the Fire Ser­vices. "If fire can't deal with it, they would call ODPM, and ODPM would get the mil­i­tary to come and as­sist."We are man­agers. We man­age dis­as­ter risk," he added.