GEISHA ALON­ZO

Trop­i­cal Storm Kirk is gain­ing speed in the At­lantic but would be on a di­rect path to Trinidad and To­ba­go and could hit by the end of this week should it con­tin­ue to gain strength and main­tain its cur­rent path.

The Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, along with the 14 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions, are now close­ly mon­i­tor­ing its de­vel­op­ment.

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Kaz­im Ho­sein said peo­ple must safe­guard them­selves and their prop­er­ty should an emer­gency strike.

“We may not be af­fect­ed by this trop­i­cal storm but we must do what we can to safe­guard our loved ones and homes. I en­cour­age peo­ple to take note of the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Hot­lines that are in place for emer­gency use, to keep mon­i­tor­ing the news to be in­formed of fur­ther de­vel­op­ments," Ho­sein in a re­lease.

"It is al­so im­por­tant to put to­geth­er their emer­gency kits with re­serves of wa­ter and oth­er ne­ces­si­ties in case they are need­ed. Along with the rest of the na­tion, I pray that we are not af­fect­ed, and hope that the sys­tem weak­ens and veers away from the is­land chain al­to­geth­er."

The var­i­ous dis­as­ter man­age­ment units are cur­rent­ly up­dat­ing re­sponse equip­ment in­ven­to­ries and re­lief items to en­sure that an or­gan­ised and ef­fi­cient ef­fort can be launched if nec­es­sary.

The T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS), in an up­date yes­ter­day, said Kirk's max­i­mum sus­tained winds are near 65 kilo­me­tres per hour with high­er gusts. It said some strength­en­ing is fore­cast dur­ing the next day or two.

It said weak­en­ing is like­ly dur­ing the mid­dle to lat­ter part of the week as it ap­proach­es the Less­er An­tilles.

How­ev­er, the Met Of­fice added that T&T is not un­der any trop­i­cal storm or hur­ri­cane watch or warn­ing at this time. It al­so said that it had no­ticed that there are a few per­sons who do not ful­ly un­der­stand the fore­cast track/cone graph­ic. It ex­plained that the cone rep­re­sents the prob­a­ble track of the cen­tre of a trop­i­cal cy­clone.

The Met Of­fice says this means that it is pos­si­ble for the cen­tre of the cy­clone to pass any­where with­in the shad­ed/hatched re­gion. It not­ed that the cone does not show the size of the storm or the ex­tent of its wind field.

The Met Of­fice said it is al­so pos­si­ble for haz­ardous con­di­tions to oc­cur out­side of the cone. It said un­cer­tain­ty in the fore­cast track in­creas­es with time, which is the rea­son for the grad­ual in­crease in the size of the cone.