An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents from north-cen­tral and north-west­ern Trinidad, in ar­eas such as Ca­roni, Curepe, St Au­gus­tine, Val­sayn, Spring Vil­lage, Barataria, Beetham Gar­dens, San­ta Cruz and Mar­aval, were in­un­dat­ed by flood­wa­ters yes­ter­day, as in­tense rain­fall left some ac­cess routes im­pass­able, and homes and busi­ness­es un­der wa­ter.

An Ad­verse Weath­er Alert was is­sued by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) at 10.29 am yes­ter­day, warn­ing of scat­tered show­ers and thun­der­show­ers, ac­com­pa­nied by light­ning and winds in ex­cess of 55 km/hr. The yel­low alert was due to go in­to ef­fect from 11.30 am to 5 pm yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, by the time the pub­lic be­came aware of the no­ti­fi­ca­tion, the rains were down, leav­ing many scram­bling to se­cure prop­er­ty and valu­ables.

Many of those af­fect­ed in the Curepe area ad­mit­ted to be­ing un­aware of just how dev­as­tat­ing the heavy rains would have been.

Guardian Me­dia me­te­o­rol­o­gist Kalain Ho­sein con­firmed that the steady down­pour be­tween 11 am and noon had re­sult­ed in around 75 mm or three inch­es of rain­fall be­ing record­ed dur­ing that hour.

In­di­cat­ing that the fig­ure was based on da­ta re­ceived from weath­er sta­tions in the af­fect­ed area, Ho­sein said, “Just un­der one third of Trinidad’s Au­gust av­er­age rain­fall (255.3 mm) fell in­side an hour, lead­ing to se­vere street/flash floods.”

Res­i­dents in Curepe liv­ing along Rapsey Street, Bushe Street, Watts Street, Joyeau Street and Black­man Lane were gal­vanised in­to ac­tion as ris­ing wa­ters be­gan fill­ing their front yards, garages and even­tu­al­ly their homes.

For some, emer­gency mea­sures, such as tow­els and sand­bags, were not enough to keep out the mud­dy wa­ters.

At Watts Street, one home-own­er laid out wood­en slats and placed con­crete blocks atop them to re­duce the wa­ter com­ing in­to the yard, whilst his wife placed a piece of plas­tic ripped from a toi­let pa­per pack­age and an­chored by three red bricks to block the flow of wa­ter from the drain.

Wear­ing a shop­ping bag atop her head as she peered out to sur­vey the floods, the woman point­ed to the makeshift bar­ri­er and said, “This is the first time we flood like this.”

Grate­ful her premis­es were not as bad­ly af­fect­ed as oth­ers along the street, she said the drains in the area were not to be blamed as they had been cleaned. She said the heavy rains in such a short time were just too much yes­ter­day, and the run-off would have been an is­sue for all.

Wad­ing through at least three feet of wa­ter which gushed in­to his garage and con­tin­ued to rise, home-own­er and pro­pri­etor Ma­hadeo Ma­haraj said, “Couch, fridge, stove, bed, every­thing float­ing. Right now I have chil­dren on top bar­rels, stand up.”

Claim­ing they were af­fect­ed every time there were heavy rains, he said it had been a cou­ple of years since they were so bad­ly af­fect­ed.

Al­though Ma­haraj used a wa­ter pump to get the wa­ter out as he strug­gled to keep it from get­ting in­to the house, it was for nought as the ris­ing wa­ters seeped un­der the door.

Ma­haraj’s freez­ers, which he us­es to store goods for the shop he op­er­ates at the front of his house, were al­so flood­ed out. He said the last big flood two years ago had forced him to block his back and front doors as he had, “gone up three brick height, so every­body have to cross over.”

De­spite this mea­sure which had worked well, Ma­haraj said it was not enough to stop the wa­ter yes­ter­day.

An el­der­ly woman liv­ing next door to Ma­haraj stood help­less­ly and looked on at the flood­wa­ters which filled her yard and home as she re­turned from run­ning er­rands.
Strand­ed on the road as her chil­dren and grand­chil­dren re­mained ma­rooned in­side, she hand­ed her bags to a rel­a­tive who walked through the mud­dy wa­ter to place them on a ta­ble.

A home­own­er on Rapsey Street, who wished not to be named, said while he was ex­pect­ing the flash flood­ing, he was caught un­aware by just how quick­ly the wa­ter came up.

“I knew the rain­fall was in­tense but I nev­er sus­pect­ed it would have filled up so quick­ly.”

Scoop­ing wa­ter in­to a buck­et, he too agreed the in­tense rains with­in a short space of time had left many scram­bling to put mea­sures in place.

In one in­ci­dent in St Au­gus­tine, a car that stalled in the flood­wa­ters was moved by the force of the wa­ter, even as near­by res­i­dents shout­ed to the dri­ver to re­verse.

The Mar­itime Over­pass in Barataria was al­so im­pass­able for sev­er­al hours, with some mo­torists warn­ing peo­ple via so­cial me­dia to avoid the in­ter­sec­tion af­ter mud­dy wa­ter, de­bris and slush washed down in rapid­ly ris­ing and fast-flow­ing wa­ters.

In oth­er videos shared on­line, some al­so joked that Mara­cas Beach had even re­lo­cat­ed to the pop­u­lar Grand Bazaar Mall, Val­sayn, as “waves” could be seen every time a car drove through the flood­wa­ters.