An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are thank­ing God for spar­ing the coun­try af­ter Hur­ri­cane Beryl passed north of To­ba­go, leav­ing a trail of dam­age in the Wind­ward Is­lands.

At­tribut­ing a shift in the storm’s tra­jec­to­ry slight­ly north as the main rea­son that To­ba­go had been spared the cat­a­stroph­ic dam­age ini­tial­ly fore­cast, Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Far­ley Au­gus­tine said op­er­a­tions on the is­land would re­sume as nor­mal to­day.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Fair­field Com­plex in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine said busi­ness­es, schools, and all med­ical fa­cil­i­ties on the is­land would no longer be op­er­at­ing in emer­gency mode, and all per­son­nel are re­quired to re­port for work as nor­mal to­day.

The on­ly school that would re­main closed is Ebenez­er Methodist Pri­ma­ry School, Bet­sy Hope, which had sus­tained par­tial roof dam­age.

De­spite the 102 re­ports of dam­age re­ceived up to 4 pm yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to re­main vig­i­lant. He said while they had re­ceived above-sig­nif­i­cant rain­fall with the pas­sage of Beryl, the ex­pect­ed pre­cip­i­ta­tion and the an­tic­i­pat­ed re­sults had not ma­te­ri­alised as the sys­tem had veered slight­ly north.

This, he claimed, had “al­lowed To­ba­go to be spared a lot of the weath­er sys­tems as­so­ci­at­ed with that.”

The Chief Sec­re­tary plead­ed with Trin­bag­o­ni­ans to view the prepara­to­ry process as a dress re­hearsal for what ex­perts said will be an over­ac­tive hur­ri­cane sea­son.

“Every time we have these in­ci­dents and we ac­ti­vate like this and we are able to come away hap­py that we did not suf­fer any ex­treme dam­age, I want you to see this as a dress re­hearsal,” he stat­ed.

Warn­ing that there would come a day when the is­land would not walk away un­af­fect­ed, whether through an earth­quake or floods, Au­gus­tine as­sured of­fi­cials that they would be mov­ing to as­sist af­fect­ed peo­ple to get back on their feet in the short­est pos­si­ble time.

Dam­age in 24 vil­lages

Al­though dam­age was re­port­ed in 24 vil­lages across the is­land, res­i­dents on the east­ern side of To­ba­go were more ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed by the pas­sage of the storm. A to­tal of 145 peo­ple were re­port­ed to have sought refuge at 16 shel­ters, and ac­cord­ing to Au­gus­tine, of this num­ber, five fam­i­lies now re­quire as­sis­tance be­yond a 72-hour pe­ri­od.

The ma­jor­i­ty of in­ci­dents re­port­ed were cen­tred around fall­en trees, dam­aged roofs, and downed pow­er lines or pow­er out­ages. As of­fi­cials em­bark on an im­me­di­ate roof re­pair dri­ve, Au­gus­tine said they would be tak­ing ad­van­tage of the pres­ence of sol­diers to car­ry out the is­land-wide ef­fort.

Plead­ing with peo­ple to be hon­est, he stressed that re­pairs would on­ly be done on roofs that would have been dam­aged fol­low­ing the pas­sage of Beryl.

He said, “That will con­tin­ue un­abat­ed un­til we are able to fix all the roofs that were dam­aged as per this weath­er event, so please don’t re­port your old roof that wasn’t good all the time or that wasn’t dam­aged by this sys­tem.”

An­tic­i­pat­ing that the num­ber of dam­age re­ports could in­crease in the com­ing days, Au­gus­tine said the au­thor­i­ties re­mained on high alert as they mon­i­tored the weath­er sys­tem trail­ing Beryl, which is al­so fore­cast to strength­en.

And even as Trin­bag­o­ni­ans of­fered prayers for res­i­dents in oth­er is­lands af­fect­ed by Beryl, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley thanked Cari­com for ex­tend­ing a hand to T&T ahead of Beryl’s ar­rival.

In a post on his Face­book page, he too ex­tend­ed a help­ing hand, as he wrote, “Trinidad and To­ba­go sur­vived Beryl with­out too much bruis­ing. I ex­tend my sin­cer­est thanks to all my col­leagues in Cari­com who reached out to com­mit as­sis­tance to the peo­ple of T&T even as the hur­ri­cane was bear­ing down up­on us. We stand ready to of­fer sup­port to Grena­da, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines at this time as we pray, ‘There, but for the grace of God go I.’”

Smil­ing as he sat next to Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day, To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) Di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art ad­mit­ted they were now able to re­lax a bit as “Beryl may not have been as harsh to us as we were ex­pect­ing her to be.”

With no fa­tal­i­ties or in­juries record­ed fol­low­ing Beryl’s pas­sage, Stew­art urged res­i­dents to be pa­tient as of­fi­cials were work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to re­store elec­tric­i­ty to all af­fect­ed ar­eas.

On whether the hur­ri­cane had man­aged to dis­lodge the over­turned oil tanker at the Cove fa­cil­i­ty or trig­ger any fur­ther leak­age from the wreck, Au­gus­tine said no.

He ex­plained that a re­con­nais­sance video did not in­di­cate the ves­sel had moved sig­nif­i­cant­ly, and from the record­ing, “We have not seen any leak­ages nor did the ves­sel move from its lo­ca­tion.”

Au­gus­tine said a team had al­so vis­it­ed Stud­ley Park to as­sess the vats used to store the oil waste and en­sure they had not over­flowed.