KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Yes­ter­day’s rain, al­though wel­comed by many peo­ple fol­low­ing the re­cent hot spells ex­pe­ri­enced through­out the coun­try, caused hav­oc in Port-of-Spain.

Com­muters at­tempt­ing to en­ter or leave the cap­i­tal city faced much dif­fi­cul­ty, as many peo­ple com­plained of hav­ing to spend sev­er­al hours in bumper-to-bumper traf­fic while tra­vers­ing along the East­ern Main Road, Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way or the La­dy Young Road.

As a re­sult, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port grant­ed light mo­tor ve­hi­cles ac­cess to the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route from 7 pm yes­ter­day to 5 am to­day.

But this was not be­fore un­usu­al traf­fic con­ges­tion brought on by street flood­ing left hun­dreds of peo­ple strand­ed in the city and en­vi­rons and mo­torists caught in snarling traf­fic.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, an of­fi­cial from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice said the heavy rain­fall de­vel­oped from mid­morn­ing, re­sult­ing in flood­ing in parts of Port-of-Spain, in­clud­ing South Quay, Wright­son Road and George Street.

The Met Of­fice said it re­ceived no of­fi­cial re­ports of fall­en trees or dam­age caused to any in­fra­struc­ture but fore­cast­ed that thun­der­storm ac­tiv­i­ty would con­tin­ue through­out the rest of yes­ter­day.

The Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter al­so said there was an 80 per cent chance a trop­i­cal cy­clone could de­vel­op over the next 48 hours.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, one dri­ver said it took three hours to get from work in Port-of-Spain to his D’abadie home, but the time was most­ly spent stuck in stand­still traf­fic from up­town to down­town Port-of-Spain.

Sim­i­lar­ly, some­one tak­ing pub­lic trans­port said it made no sense tak­ing a Port-of-Spain taxi to get to City Gate, as there was traf­fic on every street.

And walk­ing to City Gate from up­town Port-of-Spain al­so proved dif­fi­cult, as huge pud­dles of wa­ter filled the pedes­tri­an walk­way and the en­trance of City Gate was al­so flood­ed, she added.

Cor­rob­o­rat­ing the re­ports of flood­ing in down­town Port- of-Spain yes­ter­day, May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne told Guardian Me­dia he was aware of the grid­lock in the af­ter­noon com­mute but said no ad­verse events were re­port­ed.

Al­leyne said, “We are aware of the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion. We’ve been in con­tact with our Su­per­in­ten­dent of City Po­lice to ver­i­fy if there are any re­ports of any spe­cif­ic ad­verse events. We don’t have any re­ports of that at this time so we ex­pect that in short or­der the traf­fic will al­le­vi­ate.”

“I’m ad­vised there was some wa­ter that set­tled in the vicin­i­ty of Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion and there was some wa­ter that set­tled in the vicin­i­ty of South Quay. That usu­al­ly hap­pens when there’s heavy rain­fall and is ex­pect­ed to run off as per usu­al,” he added.

Up to late last evening, there was still traf­fic con­ges­tion re­port­ed around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.