Re­port­ing by Ot­to Car­ring­ton

and Ralph Ban­warie

Over­whelmed by flood­ing in parts of San­gre Grande and en­vi­rons yes­ter­day, cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Anil Juter­am called for back­up sup­port and heavy equip­ment to help the af­fect­ed peo­ple.

While res­i­dents re­mained strand­ed in their homes and sev­er­al peo­ple lost house­hold items, Juter­am told Guardian Me­dia, “I called for back­up with our in­ter­na­tion­al truck and I was told by the dri­ver that be­cause of the breed­er sys­tem, it is not made in such a way to take that lev­el of wa­ter and that is the high­est drop that the cor­po­ra­tion has. We have a back­hoe, but un­for­tu­nate­ly, the one back­hoe we have is in the To­co Main Road look­ing af­ter a tree that fell in the road and ma­rooned peo­ple.”

He called for ve­hi­cles that are high off the road, sim­i­lar to those used by the T&T Reg­i­ment, so they can dri­ve through ris­ing wa­ters to as­sist res­i­dents.

Juter­am, who was on the field as ear­ly as dawn, said the sit­u­a­tion was un­for­tu­nate and the au­thor­i­ties must un­der­stand that un­der Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, they are some­times the first re­spon­ders.
He said while they may not be equipped or trained, they are there to help save lives as best as they can.

“It’s in­deed a bad day for our re­gion of San­gre Grande and as chair­man of the cor­po­ra­tion, there’s no task too hard for us to risk to save lives and save limbs. We do what we need to do.”

Cu­nar­ipo vil­lagers told Guardian Me­dia that the flood­wa­ters start­ed ris­ing as ear­ly as 4 am, af­fect­ing close to ten com­mu­ni­ties with wa­ter lev­els up to four feet in some cas­es.

Residents of Easter Main Road, Guaico, walk through floodwaters.

RALPH BANWARIE

Along the Cu­nar­ipo Main Road, homes and busi­ness­es were un­der wa­ter. Res­i­dents said the sit­u­a­tion re­mind­ed them of last Oc­to­ber’s flood­ing which left them dev­as­tat­ed.

Reg­i­ment of­fi­cer Roger Al­leyne said he faced this sit­u­a­tion on more than one oc­ca­sion. He lament­ed that it was still the dry sea­son but with just one day of rain, this oc­curred.  

“I feel the bridge and the lack of clean­ing is the cause of the flood­ing,” he added.

Along the East­ern Main Road in San­gre Chiq­ui­to, the road was im­pass­able and mo­torists and the vil­lage were cut off from the rest of the com­mu­ni­ty.

The dri­ver of a Porsche SUV and two oc­cu­pants were trapped as their ve­hi­cle start­ed float­ing when they be­gan to dri­ve through heavy flood­wa­ters. They were saved from float­ing fur­ther off af­ter be­com­ing stuck against a rail­ing on the San­gre Chiq­ui­to bridge.

The oc­cu­pants of the ve­hi­cle had to be res­cued by vil­lagers, who were ac­com­pa­nied with Cu­mu­to-Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir and Juter­am.

One of the SUV oc­cu­pants, Mike Pray, from Maine, USA, said he was in T&T to vis­it his cousin and they passed two ar­eas where flood­wa­ters were cross­ing the East­ern Main Road. How­ev­er, when they got to that area, the ve­hi­cle start­ed to float away.

Com­ment­ing on the float­ing Porsche, Juter­am said, “We are lucky that a Good Samar­i­tan was able to of­fer their ve­hi­cle and we took the ini­tia­tive to go and res­cue these peo­ple be­cause God alone knows how long that rail­ing would last be­cause what I’m told, there’s a bridge to the back of that house and the bridge has more or less erod­ed with the lev­el of force from the wa­ter.”

Juter­am said their Dis­as­ter Unit will con­tin­ue to as­sess and of­fer as­sis­tance.

A motorist drives throught floodwaters along Good Hope Street, Sangre Grande, yesterday.

RALPH BANWARIE

San­gre North West coun­cil­lor fed up

Coun­cil­lor Nas­sar Ho­sein, the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive for San­gre North West, said he was “fed- up” with flood­ing in the re­gion.

Ho­sein was on the ground from the morn­ing, af­ter hous­es, a busi­ness place and a church were flood­ed fol­low­ing the con­tin­u­ous rain.

He re­called that these same ar­eas, Ni­ran­jan Street, Ad­ven­tist Street, Good Hope Street, Pic­ton Road and oth­er streets were flood­ed out five times in 2022 and now it is hap­pen­ing again.

“It is pres­sure and stress on poor peo­ple’s lives,” he said.

He al­so point­ed out that some 2022 flood vic­tims are yet to re­ceive their grants from the Gov­ern­ment.

Ho­sein said sev­er­al cor­re­spon­dences were sent to chief en­gi­neer Kather­ine Bad­loo Do­er­ga for the Guaico Riv­er to be dredged, but he was told this can­not be done be­cause there are too many hous­es close to the riv­er bank.

He said re­search re­vealed that the riv­er was dredged in 2012 by then min­is­ter of works and trans­port Jack Warn­er. Most res­i­dents ver­i­fied this, he said.

“I am not be­ing po­lit­i­cal, but just try­ing to prove that dredg­ing can be done.”

Joe Thomas, who lived his en­tire life in San­gre Grande, said, “I ent blam­ing coun­cil­lor Ho­sein. I am blam­ing the de­vel­op­ers, they don’t care about the peo­ple. Poor peo­ple suf­fer so much and no one in au­thor­i­ty seems to be both­ered de­spite their cries for help. We can’t stop the rain, but we could elim­i­nate the flood­ing.”

He called on the au­thor­i­ties to ap­ply the laws on home­own­ers and de­vel­op­ers block­ing main wa­ter cours­es.

Up to late yes­ter­day, com­muters and mo­torists head­ing to their homes were strand­ed as some roads re­mained im­pas­si­ble.

Sangre Grande residents walk in floodwaters yesterday after heavy rainfall.

RALPH BANWARIE

Cu­mu­to MP blames un­reg­u­lat­ed de­vel­op­ment, lack of box drains

Cu­mu­to-Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir, com­ment­ing on the flood­ing, said, “You can see we’re in April show­ers and a cer­tain gen­tle­man just told me April show­ers showed me flow­ers. If this is April show­ers and we have some dev­as­tat­ing floods, my gosh...” he won­dered what would hap­pen when the rainy sea­son hits.

“I have about 17 to 19 ar­eas so far that have been in­un­dat­ed with floods.”

The MP said that land de­vel­op­ment was a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the wide­spread flood­ing.

“I just pray and hope that a lot of these land de­vel­op­ments are le­gal and that the ap­pro­pri­ate per­mis­sions would have tak­en place, but in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties like this, where it’s hard times for every­one, many peo­ple with es­tates, what they do, cut down the land and sell the plots.

“Many ar­eas in Cu­mu­to-Man­zanil­la do not have box drains or ad­e­quate box drains so that they can take off this flood wa­ter. But re­mem­ber, this is the first bit of rain, so all the bush­es and the bam­boo and the de­bris may have clogged ar­eas. I’m just guess­ing here, but we need to look at that more.”