With sev­er­al rivers ris­ing above thresh­olds in South Trinidad yes­ter­day, many fam­i­lies were pray­ing and hop­ing that floods would spare their homes last night.

Wa­ter­cours­es in Pe­nal, Bar­rack­pore and Wood­lands be­gan spilling around noon as high tide slowed drainage. Lev­els were al­so high­er than usu­al in the Princes Town mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty.

For Vin­dra Man­groo and her fam­i­ly, who live on the bank of the Oropouche Riv­er along Su­chit Trace, Pe­nal, the wa­ter was a few inch­es un­der their home. Man­groo said the riv­er had al­ready spilt to un­der her house when she woke yes­ter­day morn­ing. She said she, her hus­band and four chil­dren had nowhere else to go, not­ing peo­ple stole their food the last time they re­lo­cat­ed to an emer­gency shel­ter.

“We do be fright­ened be­cause re­mem­ber we have our an­i­mals. Re­mem­ber, we have our tanks. We have it tied down, but some­times it could burst. It might go away. We might not get it back. And then re­mem­ber the house is in the riv­er, so you can­not tell how deep the post is. You do not know when wa­ter comes push­ing out,” Man­groo said.

Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Dr Allen Sam­my re­port­ed wide­spread flood­ing in Wood­land yes­ter­day.

Mean­while, Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SRC) chair­man Den­ish Sankers­ingh said the weath­er ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty, with floods in Pa­lo Seco, Erin, Ce­dros, De Gannes Vil­lage, San­ta Flo­ra and Quar­ry Vil­lage. Some peo­ple were un­able to get to their homes.

Sankers­ingh said it was like­ly that the cor­po­ra­tion would have to re­lo­cate some fam­i­lies, as sev­er­al homes were un­der threat.

“The re­sul­tant build-up will come be­cause of rain that has fall­en. That is where the prob­lems come. Al­though we would not see it to­day when the wa­ter ac­cu­mu­lates, we will see neg­a­tive ef­fects to­mor­row (to­day). We are try­ing to put what­ev­er lim­it­ed mea­sures we have in place, but yes, we ex­pect some neg­a­tive con­se­quences with the build-up of the wa­ter and the re­sul­tant flood­ing,” Sankers­ingh said.

The SRC coun­cil spent yes­ter­day co­or­di­nat­ing re­sources to as­sist those af­fect­ed. Sankers­ingh said they were al­so try­ing to put ad­di­tion­al con­tin­gen­cies in place.

The Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion suf­fered no floods, but chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine said riv­er lev­els were high. He said if rain fell overnight, flood­ing was like­ly. The pic­ture was dif­fer­ent in the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, where chair­man Ray­mond Co­zi­er said the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty ex­pe­ri­enced over­cast con­di­tions for most of the day. Co­zi­er said there were no breach­es of rivers.

Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Hen­ry Awong said his mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty al­so fared well un­der the pass­ing trop­i­cal wave.