The threat of se­vere weath­er is caus­ing anx­i­ety among res­i­dents in flood-prone com­mu­ni­ties.

The T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice fore­cast in­tense rain­fall start­ing to­day and a yel­low-lev­el ad­verse weath­er alert has been is­sued.

Pe­ri­od­ic heavy show­ers and iso­lat­ed thun­der­storms have in­creased the risk of street flood­ing and land­slides in vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

“When the weath­er is like this I start to get scared,” said Oma Ram­saran of Madras Set­tle­ment, a dis­trict no­to­ri­ous for knee-deep flood­wa­ters that turn roads in­to rivers.

In 2018, un­prece­dent­ed rain­fall led to wide­spread flood­ing. St He­le­na was among the worst af­fect­ed ar­eas.

Ram­saran said the trau­ma from the in­ci­dent con­tin­ues to linger. 

“To go through an­oth­er flood­ing like that again re­al­ly would not be nice, peo­ple are still re­cov­er­ing,” she said.

In re­cent years, res­i­dents in low-ly­ing ar­eas have come to ex­pect flood­ing as a grim sea­son­al oc­cur­rence that dis­places fam­i­lies and caus­es mil­lions in dam­age.

Ram­saran, whose fam­i­ly’s liveli­hood is earned through farm­ing, said the com­ing days will be crit­i­cal.

“The loss­es does be un­ac­count­able. The farm­ers does put out a lot and some­times they just have to go with­out,” she said.

Shop own­er Julie Ram­lochan said she is pre­pared to re­spond to ris­ing wa­ter in the com­ing days.

“We rush and take up all the things and put them on the height be­cause we loss and loss plen­ty stuff, a lot of stuff gone. We can’t af­ford to lose any­more again.”

Ram­lochan, who has been liv­ing in a com­mu­ni­ty lo­cat­ed with­in the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion for more than 40 years, said more is need­ed to ad­dress drainage in the area.

“It have one drain here that the wa­ter have to go out and there is an­oth­er on the side but it full up. I have to dig the drain on the oth­er side. They cut the road as well and the wa­ter from the oth­er side, there is no way for it to flow,” she said.

Con­trac­tor Ku­mar Ramkha­lawan stat­ed that this wet sea­son will test his re­cent project aimed at pre­serv­ing live­stock.

I do fence wall right around, I do like six rows of blocks, some places three, some places four, to get the lev­els. I sur­vey it right around to get the height and lev­els of the wa­ter be­cause I had mea­sured this place when flood­ing had come.

“In years gone by we lost all our chick­ens it is a bat­tle against na­ture,” he said.

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen said ef­forts to clear wa­ter cours­es are on­go­ing and cit­i­zens should reach out to their lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives with their con­cerns.