A thun­der­storm swept across parts of north­west­ern Trinidad yes­ter­day, leav­ing a trail of dam­age af­ter it downed trees, dam­aged prop­er­ty and dis­rupt­ed elec­tric­i­ty sup­plies to hun­dreds of cus­tomers.

Wind gusts of up to 50 kilo­me­tres per hour were record­ed as the storm moved through the area.

In Barataria, a fence col­lapsed, while at Smith Hill, Care­nage, at least one roof was blown off. No in­juries were re­port­ed.

In San­ta Cruz, Sad­dle Road re­mained blocked for much of the af­ter­noon af­ter a large tree, up­root­ed by heavy rain­fall, fell on­to elec­tric­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture near the School for the Vi­su­al­ly Im­paired.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) said the tree was up­root­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12.55 pm af­ter tor­ren­tial rain sat­u­rat­ed the soil. The in­ci­dent dam­aged two util­i­ty poles be­yond re­pair and caused pow­er out­ages in sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

T&TEC said elec­tric­i­ty had been re­stored to sev­er­al af­fect­ed cus­tomers, while tree-trim­ming and over­head-line re­pair crews re­mained on site. The com­mis­sion said full restora­tion was ex­pect­ed by 7 pm in New Pax Vale, Holo­lo Road and Jag­gan Vil­lage.

The fall­en tree al­so caused a com­plete block­age along Sad­dle Road, prompt­ing the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to ad­vise mo­torists and com­muters to avoid the area and use al­ter­na­tive routes.

Pow­er saw op­er­a­tors from the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Co­or­di­nat­ing Unit of the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion were de­ployed to as­sist with clear­ing op­er­a­tions, while po­lice of­fi­cers man­aged the flow of traf­fic.

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen told Guardian Me­dia that all rel­e­vant agen­cies and emer­gency re­sponse units act­ed swift­ly to clear the road­way and ad­dress the dis­rup­tion.