Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

There is still no evac­u­a­tion plan in place for Port-of-Spain, de­spite years of traf­fic grid­lock and re­peat­ed in­ci­dents that have left the cap­i­tal locked down.

The rev­e­la­tion came dur­ing a sit­ting of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture of the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day, as Op­er­a­tions Man­ag­er at the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment, Den­nis Mar­celle, re­spond­ed to sus­tained ques­tion­ing from Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Kennedy Swarats­ingh.

When Swarats­ingh asked whether there was an evac­u­a­tion plan for Port of Spain, Mar­celle replied, “No, sir, the plan ex­ists.”

How­ev­er, as the ex­change con­tin­ued, it emerged that what ex­ists is a draft egress plan which re­mains un­der re­view by the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and has not yet un­der­gone live, on-field test­ing.

“The plan was test­ed on, if I may fin­ish, through ta­ble tops and dif­fer­ent ex­er­cis­es,” Mar­celle told the com­mit­tee.

Swarats­ingh re­ferred to sev­er­al oc­ca­sions when the cap­i­tal was ef­fec­tive­ly paral­ysed.

“I re­mem­ber the last time we were all caught, it was like a car­pet, noth­ing was mov­ing. So, if you have a plan and you have nev­er test­ed the plan, how do we know that the plan can work?” he asked.

Mar­celle lat­er con­ced­ed that the plan is still be­ing fi­nalised.

“So, yes, sir,” he said, when asked whether the com­mit­tee was be­ing told that there was no op­er­a­tional evac­u­a­tion plan in place and that the doc­u­ment re­mains in the process of for­mal­i­sa­tion and has not yet been test­ed un­der re­al traf­fic con­di­tions.

Ear­li­er in the hear­ing, Min­is­ter of Hous­ing David Lee raised the is­sue while fol­low­ing up on ques­tions about evac­u­a­tion plan­ning.

“I just want to pig­gy­back on mem­ber Hus­sein’s open­ing ques­tion about evac­u­a­tion plans,” Lee said, ask­ing whether any evac­u­a­tion plan had worked in Port-of-Spain in the last five years.

Mar­celle re­spond­ed, “I don’t re­mem­ber, to an­swer your ques­tion, I don’t re­mem­ber.”

He said a pi­lot project had been done in Port of Spain and that a sim­i­lar process had start­ed with­in the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion. How­ev­er, he said he was not aware of the cur­rent sta­tus of that plan.

“So we could prob­a­bly li­aise with our col­leagues and prob­a­bly pro­vide that in­for­ma­tion back to you. But I’m not aware of any oth­er mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty hav­ing a plan at this time,” Mar­celle said.

He added, “So as Vice Chair, in terms of Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion’s egress plan, no, I don’t think that plan would have been utilised with­in the last five years.”

Lee point­ed to heavy rain­fall events that have brought the cap­i­tal to a stand­still.

“If we have, or the PM has an evac­u­a­tion plan, let’s say Port of Spain, there are so many in­stances and I was caught up in, and I’m sure many of us, and I think one was re­cent as last year, ei­ther Oc­to­ber, No­vem­ber, when rain fell at 2 p.m. and the en­tire city was locked off,” Lee said.

“They could not twist, turn or go any­where. And there are so many oth­er in­stances like that, that over the years that I’m yet to feel that any sort of evac­u­a­tion sys­tem had been tried or put in place to min­imise or al­le­vi­ate some of that heavy traf­fic com­ing out of those kind of sit­u­a­tions.”

Mar­celle clar­i­fied that the doc­u­ment un­der dis­cus­sion is an egress plan rather than a full evac­u­a­tion plan.

“The egress plan for Port of Spain is paid through the cor­po­ra­tion and sup­port­ed through the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. The ODPM would have sat and pro­vid­ed our tech­ni­cal sup­port and guid­ance for the plan. But just to clar­i­fy, it’s an egress plan, not an evac­u­a­tion plan,” he said.

He ex­plained that the plan is cur­rent­ly back with the mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion for fi­nal re­view and will then pro­ceed to on-field test­ing.

Com­mit­tee chair­man Sophia Chote asked whether the pi­lot project ref­er­enced had ever been im­ple­ment­ed for the cap­i­tal.

“You spoke about a pi­lot project. So that is some­thing which has not been im­ple­ment­ed? For the city of Port of Spain?” she asked.

“Yes. Yes, the plan has been draft­ed and com­plet­ed,” Mar­celle replied, adding that the last re­view was done around mid last year.

Chote re­quest­ed a copy of the plan and sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on who would be re­spon­si­ble for test­ing it. Mar­celle con­firmed that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty rests with the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and not the ODPM.

Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Sad­dam Ho­sein al­so asked when sim­i­lar plans would be de­vel­oped for oth­er ar­eas of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Mar­celle said mu­nic­i­pal-lev­el plans fall un­der the re­spec­tive dis­as­ter man­age­ment units with­in each cor­po­ra­tion and added that he did not have up­dat­ed in­for­ma­tion on their time­lines.

By the end of the ex­change, the com­mit­tee es­tab­lished that while a draft egress plan for Port of Spain ex­ists on pa­per, there is still no test­ed, op­er­a­tional evac­u­a­tion plan in place for the cap­i­tal.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Port-of-Spain May­or, Chin­ua Al­leyne but no re­sponse was re­ceived up un­til presstime.