Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@CNC3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne says T&T’s Mis­sion in Mi­a­mi is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the ef­fects of Hur­ri­cane Idalia, just in case they may have to re­spond to Tri­nis who may need as­sis­tance.

He said yes­ter­day that his min­istry has been us­ing so­cial me­dia chan­nels to share all the rel­e­vant emer­gency con­tact in­for­ma­tion with na­tion­als with­in the path of the hur­ri­cane.

“The south Flori­da ar­eas with high­er con­cen­tra­tions of T&T na­tion­als have been spared the worst im­pacts of this weath­er sys­tem, but we are tak­ing noth­ing for grant­ed and re­main alert for any re­quests for as­sis­tance. Thus far, we are thank­ful to have had no re­ports of deaths or in­juries to our na­tion­als due to Idalia, and we re­main in close com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of For­eign Mis­sions in this re­gard.”

As a cat­e­go­ry three storm, Hur­ri­cane Idalia made land­fall at the Big Bend Coast re­gion (near Keaton Beach) yes­ter­day, with winds and rains sub­merg­ing homes and ve­hi­cles, turn­ing streets in­to rivers, sweep­ing away un­moored small boats and down­ing pow­er lines be­fore sweep­ing to Geor­gia.

More than 450,000 peo­ple were with­out pow­er in Flori­da and Geor­gia at 6 pm yes­ter­day.

The Tay­lor Coun­ty sher­iff told Florid­i­ans to stay in their homes and out of the way of clean-up crews.

As of 5 pm yes­ter­day, re­ports in­di­cat­ed that more than 75 peo­ple were res­cued by crews out in high-flood­ed ar­eas in St Pe­ters­burg and Flori­da af­ter Idalia moved through, but no deaths were record­ed.

T&T na­tion­al, Cindy Howe, who re­sides in Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da, post­ed to so­cial me­dia that the Idalia did not af­fect her.

“Hur­ri­cane Idalia had lit­tle to no im­pact on us over here on the east coast of FL, thank­ful­ly,” she wrote.

An­oth­er woman, Michelle Singh, who lives in the state, said they had some rain but were still spared.

“We’re not af­fect­ed, it’s go­ing to­wards Tam­pa,” she said.

Can­dice Cher­ry, who is orig­i­nal­ly from Ari­ma but lives in Tam­pa, said they were af­fect­ed by the out­er bands of the hur­ri­cane.

“Where I live in Tam­pa, we end­ed up be­ing flood­ed and los­ing elec­tric­i­ty for about 8 hours ... We Just stuck in our house be­cause of so much wa­ter,” Cher­ry said.