Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

To­bag­o­ni­ans are brac­ing for the im­pact of Trop­i­cal Storm PTC2.

Ac­cord­ing to the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice, the storm is a strong Trop­i­cal Wave but there is po­ten­tial for in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion in­to a Trop­i­cal Cy­clone over the next 24 hours.

In an­tic­i­pa­tion of the storm, hun­dreds of peo­ple in To­ba­go flocked to hard­ware stores, su­per­mar­kets and gas sta­tions in droves to pur­chase their last-minute emer­gency items on Tues­day, but the flow was be­ing con­trolled.

Long lines, filled park­ing lots and bumper-to-bumper traf­fic was ob­served, as every­one bus­tled to their lo­ca­tions be­fore the rains de­scend­ed.

Checks at sev­er­al su­per­mar­kets re­vealed bat­ter­ies, can­dles, torch­lights and tin items were sold out.

Most of the day saw over­cast weath­er con­di­tions, with grey skies.

The at­mos­phere al­so ap­peared still.

How­ev­er, the rains came around 2 pm with a con­stant flow, with no heavy winds.

The To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment (TEMA) said it is prepped and ready for any even­tu­al­i­ties re­sult­ing from the bad weath­er ex­pect­ed to hit the is­land.

All schools were or­dered closed, al­though planned grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies con­tin­ued.

The To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) is­sued a press re­lease in­form­ing the pub­lic that all pri­ma­ry care health cen­tres would be closed ear­ly, while out­pa­tient clin­ics were can­celled so as to en­sure the safe­ty of staff and pa­tients due to the Trop­i­cal storm warn­ing.

All of­fices of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) closed at 12 noon but manda­to­ry emer­gency of­fices re­mained open.

All shel­ters through­out the is­land were stocked and opened to per­sons who need­ed as­sis­tance.

In an in­ter­view, TEMA di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art said he was con­cerned for the vil­lages lo­cat­ed on the At­lantic side of the is­land

“Vil­lages like Lam­beau, Scar­bor­ough, all the way to Hope, Mt St George go­ing up to the East­ern end. These are the ar­eas that would seem­ing­ly be most vul­ner­a­ble. These vil­lages are coast­line vil­lages, they are ex­posed to the sea line en­vi­ron­ment and there is a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that there are build­ings sus­cep­ti­ble to these winds,” he said.

Stew­art said To­ba­go is ex­pect­ed to feel the brunt of the storm with winds ex­ceed­ing 40km/h. He al­so ad­vised res­i­dents to pre­pare sand­bags, se­cure roofs, bar­ri­cade doors and se­cure pets be­fore the storm.

De­spite the Trop­i­cal Storm warn­ing ef­fect, the THA Bud­get De­bate con­tin­ued with all mem­bers mak­ing con­tri­bu­tions.