Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

seigo­nie.mo­hammed@guardian.co.tt

The first time flood­wa­ters in­vad­ed Kevin Hard­uar’s Wood­land, South Trinidad home, his fam­i­ly was asleep.

It was 2017. Heavy rain­fall had caused a river­bank near the Godineau Riv­er sys­tem to fail, send­ing wa­ter in­to sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

There was no time to pre­pare, no op­por­tu­ni­ty to save the fur­ni­ture or ap­pli­ances.

By morn­ing, every room in the house, in­clud­ing the bed­rooms, had been flood­ed. The fam­i­ly was forced to leave, re­turn­ing days lat­er to dam­aged be­long­ings and the ex­haust­ing task of clean­ing up.

Near­ly a decade lat­er, Hard­uar is still liv­ing with the threat of an­oth­er flood.

“Every time there’s a weath­er alert, you know, we’re go­ing in­to ba­si­cal­ly, full-on pan­ic mode,” he said.

For fam­i­lies like his, the ques­tion is no longer sim­ply whether their homes can with­stand an­oth­er dis­as­ter, but how many times they can af­ford to re­build.

It is a re­al­i­ty con­fronting Trinidad and To­ba­go as the world ob­serves In­ter­na­tion­al Day for Dis­as­ter Risk Re­duc­tion to­mor­row, un­der the Unit­ed Na­tions theme of “Re­silience Starts at Home.”

The Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice for Dis­as­ter Risk Re­duc­tion (UN­DRR) is chal­leng­ing coun­tries to ex­am­ine whether the places in­tend­ed to pro­vide shel­ter are them­selves ex­pos­ing fam­i­lies to dan­ger.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, where flood­ing, land­slides, high winds and earth­quakes pose threats to homes, that chal­lenge rais­es un­com­fort­able ques­tions about con­struc­tion prac­tices, de­vel­op­ment de­ci­sions and the cost of build­ing safe­ly.

A home un­der siege

For Hard­uar, flood­ing has be­come an al­most an­nu­al or­deal, some­times oc­cur­ring twice in a sin­gle year. His fam­i­ly has learnt to re­spond by plac­ing con­crete blocks be­neath re­frig­er­a­tors, stoves, beds and wardrobes when­ev­er wa­ter be­gins ris­ing.

Some­times the strat­e­gy works. Oth­er times, the wa­ter ris­es be­yond their prepa­ra­tions.

Dur­ing one par­tic­u­lar­ly se­vere flood, Hard­uar re­called, ap­prox­i­mate­ly three to four feet of wa­ter en­tered the house.

Each in­ci­dent brings fi­nan­cial loss­es, dam­aged pos­ses­sions and days away from work.

“We have to stay home for al­most an en­tire week, so we have lost wages,” he ex­plained.

But the emo­tion­al toll is hard­er to cal­cu­late.

Across his com­mu­ni­ty, res­i­dents have spent thou­sands of dol­lars at­tempt­ing to pro­tect their prop­er­ties. Some have raised floors and roofs; oth­ers have back­filled their land or con­struct­ed con­crete bar­ri­ers and el­e­vat­ed dri­ve­ways.

Yet these ef­forts high­light a trou­bling re­al­i­ty: fam­i­lies are spend­ing their own mon­ey re­peat­ed­ly adapt­ing homes to a threat they can­not con­trol.

For many, mov­ing is sim­ply un­af­ford­able.

Hard­uar ex­plained that much of the com­mu­ni­ty con­sists of in­her­it­ed fam­i­ly prop­er­ties, some dat­ing back to the 1960s and 1970s, when flood­ing was not ex­pe­ri­enced at to­day’s sever­i­ty.

“If we had known then what we know now, the eas­i­est thing would have been to just move,” he said.

But gen­er­a­tions of in­vest­ment have tied fam­i­lies to the area.

The dan­gers hid­den be­hind plas­ter

While flood­ing ex­pos­es weak­ness­es in where homes are lo­cat­ed, an ex­pe­ri­enced lo­cal con­trac­tor be­lieves an­oth­er dan­ger lies in how they are con­struct­ed.

Speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, the con­trac­tor, who has worked in the in­dus­try for near­ly 50 years, warned that some of the most se­ri­ous con­struc­tion de­fects re­main in­vis­i­ble un­til dis­as­ter strikes.

“What wor­ries me most is what gets cov­ered up,” he said.

“Once the con­crete is poured and the walls are plas­tered, no­body sees the steel, the con­nec­tions or the foun­da­tion again un­til a dis­as­ter tests them.”

He re­called en­coun­ter­ing roofs with­out prop­er hur­ri­cane straps, in­ad­e­quate re­in­force­ment at struc­tur­al joints and con­crete di­lut­ed with ad­di­tion­al wa­ter dur­ing con­struc­tion.

Such short­cuts may go un­no­ticed for years.

“Those short­cuts don’t show on the day you move in. They show on the day the wind blows, the ground shakes or the wa­ter ris­es.”

The con­trac­tor be­lieves house­hold fi­nances of­ten dic­tate con­struc­tion de­ci­sions, par­tic­u­lar­ly where fam­i­lies build in­cre­men­tal­ly as mon­ey be­comes avail­able.

Vis­i­ble im­prove­ments such as tiles, kitchens and dec­o­ra­tive fin­ish­es fre­quent­ly take pri­or­i­ty over struc­tur­al safe­guards.

“Spend on the struc­ture first and up­grade the fin­ish­es lat­er. You can change a kitchen in ten years. You can­not change a foun­da­tion,” he ad­vised.

His rec­om­men­da­tions in­clude con­struct­ing floors above known flood lev­els, prop­er­ly con­nect­ing roofs to walls, en­sur­ing con­tin­u­ous struc­tur­al re­in­force­ment and in­vest­ing in ad­e­quate drainage.

For hill­side con­struc­tion, he stressed the im­por­tance of soil as­sess­ments and prop­er­ly de­signed re­tain­ing walls.

He al­so urged home­own­ers to en­gage qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als to in­spect re­in­force­ment be­fore con­crete is poured.

Who car­ries the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty?

The UN­DRR’s 2026 cam­paign makes clear that pro­tect­ing homes can­not rest sole­ly on home­own­ers.

Gov­ern­ments, de­vel­op­ers, con­struc­tion com­pa­nies, fi­nanciers and in­sur­ers all in­flu­ence whether hous­ing is safe.

The in­ter­na­tion­al agency is call­ing for stronger en­force­ment of dis­as­ter-re­silient build­ing stan­dards, risk-in­formed land-use plan­ning and greater in­vest­ment in pro­tect­ing vul­ner­a­ble house­holds.

This is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to com­mu­ni­ties where res­i­dents have in­her­it­ed prop­er­ties and can­not re­al­is­ti­cal­ly re­lo­cate.

Hard­uar said while they have iden­ti­fied pos­si­ble in­ter­ven­tions, in­clud­ing strength­en­ing river­banks, he feels their con­cerns have not re­ceived suf­fi­cient at­ten­tion and ac­knowl­edged that the re­lief grant as­sis­tance does not ad­e­quate­ly com­pen­sate fam­i­lies for their loss­es.

His ac­count rais­es a wider ques­tion about whether dis­as­ter man­age­ment is plac­ing enough em­pha­sis on pre­ven­tion.

Guardian Me­dia sought re­spons­es from the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion on the is­sues sur­round­ing de­vel­op­ment and dis­as­ter risk. How­ev­er, re­spons­es were not au­tho­rised for re­lease up to press time.

Build­ing for to­mor­row

For the con­trac­tor, the great­est ob­sta­cle is not a lack of tech­ni­cal knowl­edge.

“We know the haz­ards: flood­ing, land­slides, high winds and earth­quakes. We even know how to build against them. The knowl­edge ex­ists; the dis­ci­pline doesn’t.”

He be­lieves prop­er­ly en­forced manda­to­ry build­ing stan­dards and greater use of en­gi­neers and in­spec­tors are es­sen­tial.

But the chal­lenge ex­tends be­yond in­di­vid­ual con­struc­tion de­ci­sions.

For fam­i­lies al­ready liv­ing in vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties, safer build­ing prac­tices can­not re­place ef­fec­tive drainage, flood pro­tec­tion and in­formed de­vel­op­ment plan­ning.

And for those prepar­ing to pur­chase land or con­struct their first home, Hard­uar of­fers a warn­ing drawn from years of loss.

“Be­fore you start build­ing, look at the area, look at the prob­lems the area faces.”

A home may rep­re­sent a fam­i­ly’s great­est in­vest­ment, its his­to­ry and its fu­ture, but un­less the risks sur­round­ing it are un­der­stood and ad­dressed, that in­vest­ment can be­come a re­cur­ring dis­as­ter.

For Hard­uar and his neigh­bours, re­silience has meant learn­ing to live with ris­ing wa­ter.

The hard­er ques­tion for T&T is whether fam­i­lies should have to keep re­build­ing sim­ply to re­main at home.