While South Trinidad has so far avoid­ed ma­jor flood­ing de­spite per­sis­tent heavy show­ers yes­ter­day, lo­cal gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties re­main on high alert as more rain­fall is ex­pect­ed.

On Tues­day, the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) is­sued a Yel­low Lev­el Ad­verse Weath­er Alert, warn­ing of se­vere con­di­tions. The fore­cast in­clud­ed iso­lat­ed heavy show­ers and thun­der­storms, with the risk of street flood­ing and land­slides, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas with al­ready sat­u­rat­ed soils. Al­though ma­jor rivers were con­tained and be­low medi­um ca­pac­i­ty, the TTMS warned that wa­ter lev­els could rise quick­ly if in­tense rain­fall per­sist­ed.

By mid­day, street-lev­el flood­ing had al­ready af­fect­ed sev­er­al ar­eas in Pe­nal, in­clud­ing Clarke Road, Rochard Road, and Pe­nal Rock Road, prompt­ing the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PDRC) to dis­trib­ute sand­bags to res­i­dents. Mo­torists al­so re­port­ed flood­ing in Syne Vil­lage and Lowkie Trace, Pe­nal.

PDRC chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj said that emer­gency re­sponse teams were de­ployed to as­sess the sit­u­a­tion and pro­vide as­sis­tance. The Cor­po­ra­tion’s Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit was al­so dis­patched to aid in ar­eas where fall­en trees posed haz­ards.

“Street flood­ing now. The wa­ter­course still has some ca­pac­i­ty, so we are mon­i­tor­ing close­ly for ex­treme, wide­spread flood­ing at this time ... We are al­ways with our guards up in this sea­son, so we have every­thing on stand­by in terms of what as­sis­tance will need to be ren­dered to our burgess­es,” Ma­haraj said.

If con­di­tions wors­en, Ma­haraj as­sured that the PDRC has com­pre­hen­sive re­sponse mech­a­nisms in place, in­clud­ing shel­ter man­age­ment teams, dinghies, and evac­u­a­tion per­son­nel. Still, he re­mains hope­ful that such mea­sures would not be need­ed.

He cred­it­ed re­cent wa­ter­course clear­ance projects with re­duc­ing the sever­i­ty of flood­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in his­tor­i­cal­ly flood-prone ar­eas.

“We are see­ing some re­lief from the drainage clean­ing ex­er­cise we have done—the flood mit­i­ga­tion ex­er­cise. In some of the tra­di­tion­al flood­ing ar­eas, the flood­ing is ab­sent, but ob­vi­ous­ly, it is show­ing up in oth­er places, so we need to con­tin­ue the clear­ing.”

How­ev­er, the PDRC faces on­go­ing chal­lenges, par­tic­u­lar­ly with landown­ers who have blocked wa­ter­cours­es. Ma­haraj said a me­di­a­tion team is work­ing to gain ac­cess to pri­vate prop­er­ties for clean­ing and to pre­vent ob­struc­tions that wors­en flood con­di­tions.

To the east, the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PTRC) is al­so in a state of readi­ness. Chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine re­port­ed heavy rain­fall in the dis­trict, al­though rivers re­mained with­in their banks. He cau­tioned that with more rain ex­pect­ed, ar­eas such as Moru­ga, Bar­rack­pore, and Williamsville could ex­pe­ri­ence flood­ing lat­er to­day. Emer­gency shel­ters in these com­mu­ni­ties are al­ready on stand­by.

“Should any­thing hap­pen, we are in place to as­sist,” Roop­nar­ine said. Roop­nar­ine not­ed that over the past month, the cor­po­ra­tion had ramped up ef­forts to clean wa­ter­cours­es and dis­trib­ute sand­bags, build­ing on main­te­nance work car­ried out dur­ing the Dry Sea­son.

On the south­west­ern side of the is­land, Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo re­port­ed street flood­ing on Pluck Road and San Fran­cique. Mo­torists re­port­ed flood­ing along the South­ern Main Road in Dow Vil­lage.

“We are al­ways on stand­by 24/7 be­cause we have to mon­i­tor our riv­er lev­els and so on to see if there is any need to evac­u­ate per­sons when­ev­er that wa­ter does come down. The wa­ter usu­al­ly takes about 24 hours to reach down to the Pluck Road and San Fran­cique ar­eas, so we are on high alert and we are mon­i­tor­ing the en­tire Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion to see if the af­fect­ed per­sons need to be re­lo­cat­ed,” Mayrhoo said.