Kalain Ho­sein

All schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go will be closed on Fri­day, as in­clement weath­er is fore­cast to per­sist across the coun­try and ma­jor riv­er lev­els con­tin­ue to in­crease across Trinidad.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is­sued the state­ment last night. The rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly de­ci­sion was a marked change from three weeks ago dur­ing the pas­sage of an­oth­er weath­er sys­tem, when the school clo­sure an­nounce­ment came from a Face­book post from the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, less than an hour be­fore schools were set to be­gin.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry said, “Un­less a fur­ther ad­vi­so­ry from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is is­sued, schools will re-open Mon­day, Oc­to­ber 31st, 2022, ex­cept where clean-up op­er­a­tions in schools may be nec­es­sary. In such cas­es, par­ents will be ad­vised di­rect­ly through the school’s prin­ci­pal.”

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy al­so is­sued a re­lease con­firm­ing the clo­sure of schools.

As­sem­bly­man Zor­isha Hack­ett en­cour­ageed par­ents across the is­land to en­sure their chil­dren utilise the day for midterm re­vi­sion.

Mean­while, as of late yes­ter­day, there were no pub­lic re­leas­es from To­ba­go’s Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search, and Tech­nol­o­gy on the sta­tus of schools to­day.

On Thurs­day, T&T ex­pe­ri­enced the third day of heavy show­ers and thun­der­storms, which caused flood­ing, lo­calised wind dam­age and land­slides.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, there were 36 re­ports of flood­ing, four re­ports of fall­en trees, sev­en land­slides and one re­port of roof dam­age up to yes­ter­day.

In To­ba­go, rough seas al­so brought de­bris on­to low-ly­ing road­ways along the south­ern coast­lines. Since Tues­day, near­ly 100 in­clement weath­er re­ports have been tal­lied across both is­lands, with no re­ports of in­juries or fa­tal­i­ties.

How­ev­er, more flood­ing rain­fall is still in the coun­try’s fore­cast as the In­tertrop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone, a band of con­ver­gence that pro­duces wide­spread cloudi­ness, show­ers and thun­der­storms, re­mains across the re­gion. A trop­i­cal wave is al­so on the ap­proach, fore­cast to move across the Less­er An­tilles lat­er to­day. The re­sult­ing in­ter­ac­tion will lead to pro­longed pe­ri­ods of rain, in­tense show­ers, and thun­der­storms.

The T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) has main­tained its Ad­verse Weath­er Alert, up­grad­ing it to Or­ange Lev­el yes­ter­day evening.

The alert, which ini­tial­ly went in­to ef­fect for the coun­try at 9 pm Tues­day at Yel­low Lev­el, will re­main in ef­fect through 3 pm to­mor­row for Trinidad, To­ba­go, and sur­round­ing ma­rine ar­eas. The TTMS warns of rain­fall in ex­cess of 55 KM/H, street/flash flood­ing, land­slides, and ag­i­tat­ed seas dur­ing this pe­ri­od.

With over 72 hours of pe­ri­od­ic rain­fall, with iso­lat­ed ar­eas re­ceiv­ing up­wards of 6 inch­es (150 mil­lime­tres), riv­er lev­els across the coun­try are near­ing or at thresh­old lev­els. This prompt­ed the TTMS to is­sue an Or­ange Lev­el River­ine Flood Alert for Trinidad, which went in­to ef­fect at 8 pm yes­ter­day and will re­main in ef­fect un­til 8 pm to­mor­row. In their alert, they note that the Ca­roni Riv­er and South Oropouche Riv­er have reached thresh­old lev­els in some ar­eas, with flood­ing al­ready on­go­ing in low-ly­ing parts of the rivers. With ad­di­tion­al rain­fall overnight, the TTMS ex­pects wa­ter cours­es to be­come over­whelmed and over­top their banks.

As of 6.30 pm yes­ter­day, the up­per Ca­roni Riv­er at El Car­men was at 93 per cent ca­pac­i­ty, while the low­er Ca­roni Riv­er at Bam­boo Set­tle­ment #3, seen from the Uri­ah But­ler High­way, was at 73 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

The North Oropouche Riv­er at To­co Road was at 78 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

How­ev­er, res­i­dents in the area con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that the riv­er was near ca­pac­i­ty at Ve­ga de Oropouche last night.

The Ca­paro Riv­er was al­so at 70 per cent ca­pac­i­ty at the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency’s stream­flow gauge lo­ca­tion. No­tably, the riv­er over­topped at Durham Hills Road, Ca­paro, and par­tial­ly swept away a ve­hi­cle yes­ter­day evening. The dri­ver was res­cued.

The South Oropouche Riv­er, one of the largest rivers in south Trinidad, was al­so near thresh­old lev­els. How­ev­er, its sole stream­flow gauge was out of op­er­a­tion.

Bar­rack­pore West coun­cil­lor Nicholas Kan­hai said he alert­ed the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency and the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port about the sit­u­a­tion twice in the last month. He said their gauge was com­pro­mised due to a land­slide sur­round­ing the South Oropouche Riv­er at the Sanahie Trace Bridge, which al­so com­pro­mised the wa­ter sup­ply to the area.

Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber are no­to­ri­ous for sig­nif­i­cant flood­ing events in T&T, mark­ing the sec­ondary peak of the lo­cal wet sea­son. Ma­jor flood events oc­curred as re­cent­ly as Oc­to­ber 2018 when the Ca­roni Riv­er in­un­dat­ed the Green­vale Park de­vel­op­ment at La Hor­quet­ta and crossed the Uri­ah But­ler High­way.

In Oc­to­ber 2017, sig­nif­i­cant floods af­fect­ed cen­tral and south Trinidad.