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Sunday, July 27, 2025

Disaster management coordinator: T&T must adapt to flooding

by

Chester Sambrano
1769 days ago
20200921
A resident power washes the road along his property during emergency clean up efforts following torrential showers and flash flooding along Manan Trace and Lopinot Main Road, Arouca recently.

A resident power washes the road along his property during emergency clean up efforts following torrential showers and flash flooding along Manan Trace and Lopinot Main Road, Arouca recently.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Cit­i­zens are be­ing told they must now adapt to the flood­ing sit­u­a­tion af­fect­ing this coun­try.

Over the week­end there were sev­er­al re­ports of flood­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas in east and south Trinidad.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day Se­nior Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Co­or­di­na­tor at the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Jer­ry David said be­cause of cli­mate change and oth­er fac­tors, flood­ing has be­come a world­wide phe­nom­e­non even with all the new sci­ence and plan­ning tak­ing place.

He said here in Trinidad and To­ba­go it is no dif­fer­ent.

“We would have to learn to adapt.”

He added, “If there is a fight be­tween man and na­ture you know na­ture will win.”

He said now peo­ple must not on­ly adapt but be vig­i­lant so that re­cov­ery could take place.

“If it is that every two years you are be­ing im­pact­ed by this lev­el of wa­ter and the wa­ter is en­ter­ing your home and it is de­stroy­ing your fab­ric fur­ni­ture, and many peo­ple have fab­ric fur­ni­ture; it’s the mod­ern way to have fur­ni­ture, but per­haps it’s time to adapt more and get dif­fer­ent fur­ni­ture.”

David said in­creased rain­fall aside, there are is­sues such as un­planned de­vel­op­ments and in­dis­crim­i­nate dump­ing of garbage in wa­ter­cours­es that need to be dealt with.

For its part, he said the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment has been set­ting up com­mu­ni­ty emer­gency re­sponse teams where it trains peo­ple to rec­og­nize, re­spond and re­cov­er from haz­ards.

He al­so praised the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port for the work done to ma­jor wa­ter­cours­es which re­sult­ed in less flood­ing in tra­di­tion­al flood-prone ar­eas.

Two week­ends ago line min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan con­duct­ed a tour to ar­eas Gas­par­il­lo, Arou­ca and Mal­oney Trinidad which nev­er had an is­sue with flood­ing pri­or to this rainy sea­son.

He said more en­force­ment will be done to pre­vent peo­ple from di­vert­ing wa­ter­ways. Sinanan al­so said the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Town and Coun­try Plan­ning and the Drainage De­part­ment of his min­istry needs to be re­viewed mov­ing for­ward.


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