Carisa Lee

By 10 am yes­ter­day, many of the items to pro­tect prop­er­ties dur­ing a storm were sold out at the North­ern Hard­ware in Diego Mar­tin.

This as Trinidad and To­ba­go pre­pared for an ap­proach­ing trop­i­cal cy­clone.

“Since morn­ing, I should say yes­ter­day (Mon­day) evening, peo­ple com­ing in buy­ing a lot of flash­lights, bat­ter­ies, sand­bags, tar­pau­lins, plas­tic, all those things fin­ished,” em­ploy­ee Sha­hee­da Hutchin­son said.

A new batch of mops ar­rived while Guardian Me­dia was there.

“That is the last one and what it is go­ing on with it is it have a mal­func­tion, so that is why he end up stay­ing here,” an­oth­er em­ploy­ee said while he showed Guardian Me­dia the on­ly re­main­ing flash­light.

Su­per­mar­kets were al­so busy next door at West Bee’s Su­per­mar­ket, as many peo­ple came out ear­ly to get their ba­sic sup­plies. Items such as toi­let pa­per, canned food, can­dles and wa­ter went quick­ly.

Some peo­ple ran away from work to en­sure they were pre­pared.

“Now is back to work and then home,” shop­per Michelle Mendez said.

Mendez said she did her usu­al month-end shop­ping al­so.

Josanne Fran­cis, who came to T&T to va­ca­tion and cel­e­brate her moth­er’s birth­day, did the same.

“We did some ex­tra sup­plies, some ex­tra wa­ter, ex­tra flour and stuff like that just to make sure be­cause you nev­er know what can hap­pen,” she said.

Shel­ter man­ag­er at the Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Ja­son Bood­han, was al­so seen pur­chas­ing ba­sic items for the fa­cil­i­ty.

“Wa­ter, we have some pa­per tow­els, we have some tea and cof­fee and stuff,” he said.

Bood­han said they al­so re­ceived sleep­ing equip­ment from the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion as they pre­pared for peo­ple from the area.

“More the hilly ar­eas, off the main road, the Bagatelle area, more those places, some­times St Lu­cien Road,” he said.

Staff mem­ber of St Jude’s School for Girls, Ronald Latch­man, was al­so spot­ted pur­chas­ing ba­sic sup­plies for the res­i­dents.

“The place is very se­cured,“ he said.

Latch­man said they have al­ready spo­ken to the girls about what was hap­pen­ing.

The lines were long out­side PriceS­mart in Port-of-Spain even be­fore the ware­house opened. Many said they came to do their reg­u­lar month-end shop­ping but some peo­ple like El­ton Pouchet went for last-minute storm sup­plies.

“To­day, I re­alised I am a lit­tle short of bat­ter­ies and wa­ter so I came here to pick up those few things and what­ev­er I see we may need,” he said.

At St Christo­pher’s Ser­vice Sta­tion, on Wright­son Road, one pump at­ten­dant said there was a steady flow of cus­tomers but more than usu­al. Lines were al­so seen at gas sta­tions in Diego Mar­tin and in oth­er parts of Port-of-Spain.