Tuesday night’s near-miss with Potential Tropical Cyclone Two (PTC2) brought on a chorus of criticism from citizens who felt the authorities overreacted to the weather forecast.
Therein lies a major problem in getting this population to have the right attitude to disaster preparedness. Lulled into complacency by the myth that “God is a Trini” and the belief that these twin islands are well outside of the path of major storms, the tendency is to downplay the potential threat from these weather systems.
The truth is that T&T’s location on the fringe of the Atlantic hurricane belt means that this country is rarely affected by hurricanes. However, severe storms can come this way and there is the potential threat of earthquakes because several major fault lines also pass through our islands.
The message that needs to be reinforced is that this country is not shielded from natural disasters and has experienced catastrophic events, although not as frequently as many of our Caribbean neighbours. Also, there have been close calls.
One of this country’s recent experiences with natural disasters was in August 2018 when a magnitude 6.7 earthquake caused damage to some buildings, including the Holy Trinity Cathedral in downtown Port-of-Spain. The strength of the tremors sparked widespread panic, but no casualties were reported.
And according to the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM), this country has been hit by nine tropical storms and hurricanes, some of which resulted in significant loss of life and damage to property.
Hurricane Flora, one of the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes in recorded history, struck as a Category 3 hurricane in 1963, inflicting catastrophic damage on both islands, including 18 deaths in Tobago and two in Trinidad.
Decades earlier, in July 1933, an unnamed hurricane caused 11 deaths and left thousands homeless. There were newspaper accounts of “tremendous havoc” in oilfields in Palo Seco and hundreds of houses destroyed in Erin.
This country’s climate, topography and urban infrastructure make us highly susceptible to destructive events such as floods in low-lying urban and agricultural communities and landslides in mountainous areas. It does not take a major storm to trigger weather-related catastrophes.
All it took was an adverse weather alert triggered by an Inter-Tropical Convergent Zone (ITCZ) to bring on three days of persistent rainfall that triggered flooding in several parts of the country in October 2018. Greenvale, La Horquetta, one of the hardest-hit communities, was submerged to the extent that several residents had to seek refuge on their roofs.
That single event adversely affected 150,000 persons, including 800 persons who had to be evacuated and 300 who had to go to emergency shelters.
Instead of grumbling about having to prepare for a storm that at the last minute took a turn that spared these islands from severe damage, citizens should be thankful that the authorities were more proactive this time around in mobilising the necessary resources in the event of a direct hit.
This early in the hurricane season, there is still a strong possibility of serious weather systems heading in this direction, so citizens need to be prepared in the future. It is always better to be safe than sorry.