Akash Sama­roo

At the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit (DMU) of­fice in Diego Mar­tin on Mon­day, Glen­coe res­i­dent Lisa Faria re­quest­ed that 15 sand bags be loaded in the tray of her Nis­san Navara.

“I live in a town­house that was flood­ed be­fore and we didn’t use sand bags so I said this time, let’s be pre­ven­ta­tive. They (Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion work­ers) were very help­ful and I was told I need six per door, so I took fif­teen.”

DMU chair­man Sigler Jack was on site and told Guardian Me­dia the cor­po­ra­tion has been prepar­ing for quite some time for the hur­ri­cane sea­son.

He said, “We are very well pre­pared, all our stocks are in place, we are mak­ing sure all ve­hi­cles are fu­elled, I checked with my DMU co-or­di­na­tor and we are very high on in­ven­to­ry at this time.”

Along the East/West cor­ri­dor, in the Tu­na­puna Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, its DMU field of­fi­cer, Vin­worth Lindee, was in good spir­its as he placed yet an­oth­er shov­el-full of sand in a white bag.

“Things look­ing good, a lot of peo­ple com­ing in, guys pack­ing out the sand so they could just take it and move, six bags per per­son, they can come every sin­gle day un­til the sand runs out and then we’ll get more sand,” he said

At the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, chair­man Hen­ry Awong told Guardian Me­dia that a ma­jor com­mu­ni­ca­tion is­sue is wor­ry­ing him.

“Since June 8, our main tele­phone lines in the cor­po­ra­tion is down be­cause of theft of the ca­bles so at this time if you’re try­ing to call us it’s an is­sue, the phone will be ring­ing if you’re call­ing but that’s not the case, no calls in, no calls out so that can be a fac­tor in this whole readi­ness re­sponse, we have been ask­ing TSTT to help but there is one line in the DMU that is work­ing and that num­ber is 800-2882,” Awong said.

Awong said he is al­so con­cerned about what he called a lack of work done by the Works and Trans­port Min­istry on the Guaracara Riv­er.

“We made nu­mer­ous com­plaints but noth­ing was done so far with that, so that low­er Guaracara Riv­er would flood and have se­vere flood­ing over the years, yet still that main wa­ter­course was not at­tend­ed to but we pray and we will do the best that we can,” he said

At the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Dr Allen Sam­my said the cor­po­ra­tion’s his­to­ry with flood­ing has pre­pared them for the in­com­ing in­clement weath­er. How­ev­er, Sam­my told Guardian Me­dia that their emer­gency re­sponse ve­hi­cles may be ground­ed come to­mor­row.

“Our re­leas­es for diesel will run out by to­mor­row (Tues­day) so un­less we can get an ur­gent re­lease, we will have prob­lems on Wednes­day with as­sist­ing be­cause none of our trucks and ex­ca­va­tors will be able to go out,” Sam­my said.

In Point Fortin, its cor­po­ra­tion ac­ti­vat­ed three emer­gency shel­ters. May­or Saleema Thomas said sev­er­al hous­es usu­al­ly suf­fer from high winds brought on by in­clement weath­er. Thomas said roofs be­ing blown off is a usu­al oc­cur­rence and they were be­ing proac­tive.

“We would have start­ed prep­ping the Point Fortin Sport­ing In­door Are­na, the New Vil­lage Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre and the Open Bible Church, so we pre­pared those three shel­ters and we are look­ing at us­ing schools as shel­ters and we’d ac­ti­vate those by to­mor­row but as you know school is on­go­ing,” she said.

Guardian Me­dia tried to con­tact oth­er re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion heads but some were locked in emer­gency meet­ings yes­ter­day.