As re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions spent yes­ter­day prepar­ing for the im­pact of an in­com­ing trop­i­cal wave, Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) Kwasi Robin­son urged peo­ple to pre­serve their lives first should dis­as­ters oc­cur.

Robin­son said peo­ple of­ten ven­ture in­to flood­wa­ters, seek­ing to save prop­er­ty. They some­times lead to peo­ple be­ing swept away by flood­wa­ter or suf­fer­ing in­juries.

“Just try to se­cure your per­son. Per­son­al safe­ty is im­por­tant first, and then prop­er­ty. Of­ten times peo­ple try to go in­to flood­wa­ters to save their ve­hi­cles or to go back in to save prop­er­ty. I think the preser­va­tion of hu­man life is most im­por­tant, and we un­der­stand why you are do­ing it,” said Robin­son.

At 2 pm yes­ter­day, the Unit­ed States Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­tre (NHC) re­port­ed that the trop­i­cal wave pro­duced show­ers and thun­der­storm ac­tiv­i­ty near the south­ern Wind­ward Is­lands. The sys­tem con­tin­ued to show signs of or­gan­i­sa­tion and would like­ly be­come a trop­i­cal de­pres­sion with­in the next cou­ple of days. The NHC stat­ed that the chance of the wave up­grad­ing to a trop­i­cal de­pres­sion in 48 hours was 70 per cent and 90 per cent over the next five days.

Robin­son said the re­gion was vul­ner­a­ble to land­slides, es­pe­cial­ly in the Blachisseuse, Morne La Croix, Lopinot, Mara­cas and Madamas com­mu­ni­ties in the North­ern Range. He said crews re­spond­ed to four land­slips in the past three weeks. Street and flash floods oc­cur in the low-ly­ing ar­eas of Kel­ly Vil­lage, Arou­ca, Trinci­ty, Cunu­pia, St Au­gus­tine, Pi­ar­co and Green­vale. He said the TPRC was al­ways ready re­gard­less of the weath­er sys­tems.

Chair­man of the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (DM­RC) Sigler Jack said crews are ready to re­spond to the im­pact of the in­com­ing trop­i­cal wave in a re­gion com­pris­ing hilly ter­rain. Un­like some mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties, the DM­RC has large hills, es­pe­cial­ly in Diego Mar­tin, Pe­tite Val­ley, Care­nage and Mar­aval. Jack ex­plained that dur­ing heavy rain­fall, the vol­ume of wa­ter gush­ing down of­ten co­in­cides with high tide, flood­ing the low­er parts. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, with peo­ple liv­ing on hills and in val­leys, land­slides and flood­wa­ter crash­ing in­to homes are pos­si­ble.

He said fol­low­ing Tues­day’s co­or­di­nat­ing meet­ing with Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi, the DM­RC held in­ter­nal dis­cus­sions.

“All sys­tems are more or less in place. We are on high alert, al­though the wa­ter ad­vi­so­ry is still yel­low. We are do­ing a lot of track­ing of the im­pend­ing storm. At this point, all we can do is wait,” Jack said.

He added the DM­RC cleaned wa­ter­cours­es ahead of the rain. Re­gard­less of whether the DM­RC equip­ment will be enough to meet the de­mands of a pos­si­ble dis­as­ter, Jack as­sured res­i­dents that they are work­ing along­side the De­fence Force, Fire Ser­vice and oth­er dis­as­ter man­age­ment and re­sponse agen­cies.

Mean­while, the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion Cor­po­ra­tion Chair­man Dr Allen Sam­my over­saw work­ers prepar­ing sand­bags to dis­trib­ute to res­i­dents across the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty ahead of the trop­i­cal wave. The PDRC had 2,500 sand­bags in stock and work­ers were ready to pro­vide more. Sam­my said the PDRC dis­trib­uted bags ear­li­er this year, so some res­i­dents al­ready have them placed at their homes.

Sam­my said that while the wa­ter­cours­es in the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty were low, there was ground sat­u­ra­tion, mean­ing that per­sis­tent rain would raise riv­er lev­els quick­ly.

Sam­my added the PDRC has over 100 tar­pau­lins, 150 cas­es of wa­ter and canned food. There are al­so wa­ter pumps in case wa­ter en­ters homes, pow­er saws to clear fall­en trees and equip­ment op­er­a­tors stand­ing by.

“I want to as­sure the pub­lic that if there is an ur­gent need for sup­plies of these types, they should call us on our hot­line: 800-7372, and we will re­act im­me­di­ate­ly,” Sam­my said.