Floods take toll on T&T
Still reeling from the effects of Monday’s heavy rains and flooding, Port-of-Spain suffered another major blow yesterday as several disasters, natural and otherwise, shut down vehicular and pedestrian movement in and around the capital city.
Distress
Thousands stranded as massive floods, landslides cripple East-West Corridor
City Gate shuts down
Port-of-Spain came to a standstill yesterday as thousands of commuters were stranded while making their way into and out of the capital city because of muddy waters that flooded major streets.
Commuters gridlocked
Incessant rains over the past few days, coupled with yesterday’s inclement weather resulted in flooding, landslides and left students marooned at a primary school in Bourg Mulatresse.
Bridge collapses
It was stress for motorists heading west and east along the Churchill Roosevelt Highway yesterday as the collapse of the B 1/12 bridge at Macoya caused them to be caught in hours of traffic yesterday morning. The situation had worsened by afternoon as heavy showers caused flooding in several parts of the east-west corridor.
Floods maroon Marabella residents
1). Stop putting up homes and buildings without proper drainage.
2). Stop cutting down the forrest and shrubs, they absorb the run off water.
3). Stop throwing garbage whereever, it clogs the streams and rivers. It also cause deseases, which you then have to walk through. Try using a garbage can.
4). If you are truly sick and tired of getting flooded out, you and your neighbors start a petition stating that if the problem isnt fixed ASAP every name on the list will be voting against him/her. Go protest in front of your member of parliment homes, PNM & UNC. take the petition and the press with you see how fast you get a response. If you get lip service from them, let them know the health & welfare of you family and neighbors is more important than thier apathy for thier constituents.
5). You are being used by two political parties who have no respect for you, thier only concern is who is in power to raid the nations wealth. And once they have taken as much money as they can, well they immigrate to Canada or the States. Where they get better government services.
Coping with floods
Before seeing the splinter in private developers’ eyes, however, the Government needs to examine the log in its own.
Landslides, flooding lead to Tears for baby Natalie
The last act which three-year-old Natalie Alladin performed on Tuesday was to show her mother, Neela Poon, a picture which she drew in school that afternoon.
Landslides in West Trinidad
Mud Madness
Citizens struggle to clean up after the big flood
More stress
PoS mayor: Need to dredge East Dry River
Port-of-Spain mayor Murchison Brown wants serious attention to be paid to the dredging of the East Dry River.
ODPM head: Evacuation plan still in draft form
An evacuation plan for Port-of-Spain exists only in draft form and has not been adequately tested, says Colonel George Robinson, chief executive officer of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM).
Workers sent home early as clouds gather
PARANOIA set in around midday yesterday as offices and businesses sent workers home early, as dark clouds bearing showers gathered above the capital.
As a trinidadian it saddens me to read about the floods ad whats happening in Trinidad.
I certainly agree with David Ramgobin in suggesting that the public protest so that the politicians might wake and smell the roses.
Its better to have tried and fail than not to have tried at all.
Trinidadians Protest!!!!
May God bless our nation.
PoS mayor: Need to dredge East Dry River- well no shit shurlock
Wrong David , your solutions are shortsighted and won’t work for sweet T&T where we cannot “wait for the next holiday ,to fet our lives away.”Break down the fevalla types encampments and housing settlements in John , John, Lavantille, Never Dirty and other former final resting places of children of exslaves. Put these hard working folks in the prestine and choice real estate in Central and similar areas where sugar cane and rice were grown. It is clear that our agricultural industry is dead as the fortunate folks that once own most of these lands have migrated to better lives in your favorite places like Boston, Ottawa, and Northumbaland . That’s your solution for flooding , as the gabbage trucks would now be justified for not visiting the concreat urban jungles, and the Ministry of Works can remain fervent in their neglect of pertinent infrastructure for perennially neglected people of a certain hue. I am sure you can agfree with my assessment.
Thank All those PNM’ites in South Trinidad! They’re getting exactly what they voted for! All that water represents the tears that God and the Angels are crying over what Manning and his Followers are doing to the country!
Weather spin
Newsday Editorial
Friday, November 21 2008
The Patrick Manning administration has at various times been accused of indifference, and even contempt, toward citizens. These comments have usually been made in the context of particular issues, such as the spiralling crime rate or the construction of aluminium smelters. This is par for the course for any administration, and is not necessarily an accurate indication of the Government’s attitude, only citizens’ perception of that attitude — though, in a democracy, that in itself poses a political problem.
Recent responses by Government Ministers, however, lend credence to the perception that they have a low opinion of ordinary citizens. Faced with the devastation wrought by Tuesday’s 50 minutes of rainfall, ranging from flooded homes to vehicles washed away to a toddler’s death, Government spokesmen could only muster unconvincing excuses.
Local Government Minister Hazel Manning, trotted out the “stationary clouds” line and asserted that in that context no drains could handle such torrential downpours. This in a world where the Dutch managed 200 years ago to keep the sea at bay on their low-lying land, and where developed nations, with far more violent weather patterns than ours, experience floods only when hurricanes hit.
Works Minister Colm Imbert in his turn spoke about saturated ground, the need to widen drains, and legal action against errant land developers. All this in the context of what he called “peculiar rainfall”.
But, whether the rainfall is strange or not, these Government Ministers are acting as though flooding is a new occurrence in Trinidad and Tobago. A person unfamiliar with this country would swear, hearing them talk, that TT has never had floods in Port-of-Spain, St Ann’s, central and south. And here is where the Government Ministers’ contempt for citizens shows itself, because they assume, by acting like never-see-come-sees, that people will be fooled into forgetting the past as well.
The Government needs to spin this issue, because the flooding in PoS and other parts of the country provides the most dramatic and eye-catching evidence of this administration’s skewed priorities, lack of vision, and poor planning capabilities. Despite what Mrs Manning believes about drains, and despite Mr Imbert’s attempt to blame the weather, the flooding problem can be solved by human intervention. So a government concerned about the people would have used the billions of dollars from the energy windfall to deal first with infrastructural issues, rather than constructing showy buildings and hiring grass-cutters.
The country had the money to get experts and equipment that could have reduced flooding in key areas within a three- to five-year period. Had the Government taken this path, food crops might not have been destroyed, which would have helped curb inflation, citizens would not have gone through the annual stress of flood damage, and the lives of three children might have been spared.
Government spokespersons take their cue from the leader, however. And Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s decision to postpone his address to the nation scheduled for Wednesday night, on the basis that TT was playing a football World Cup qualifier, reveals his true view of the people, as well as an ego which could not bear the thought that citizens might prefer to watch a football match than listen to him speak about a world financial crisis which his administration has continually denied will affect the nation.
http://www.newsday.co.tt/editorial/0,90302.html
it is all our fault!!!yes the time has come for all of us to watch around.around with all that has happen an all i can say it is all our fault as individuals.nothing happen’s by guess.TIME WAISTED IS NEVER RECOVERED!!
The damage caused by the heavy rains was due mostly to the heavy runoff, some of which would usually percolate through the ground. Dredging the Dry River is not the solution since there is not much to dredge. Also, the river is paved all the way to the ocean. Nevertheless, large areas of land throughout the country, which have been paved over by roads, commercial buildings, and houses over the last 20 years are preventing water from percolating through the soil. Over the last few years, the severity of flooding has increased with normal rainfall. As more land is paved over with roads, and houses built, flooding could become more severe in the future. When the government is more interested in palatial mansions, executive jets, high-rise building, 200 million dollars for BMW motocars, and not a cent for flood-control projects, it tells a lot about the priorities of the government. There is a saying that goes something like this: Put a crapo in a pot of room temperature water and slowly turn up the temperature, and the crapo would stay in the boiling water and not jump out. This is one way that the incidence of flooding that we have been witnessing could best be described. Fortunately, the flooding did not affect me, but the heavy rainfall did cause some minor erosion towards the front of the house. Patrick Manning and Basdeo Panday have to be blamed for the destruction and damage caused by this flooding since they both decided to recklessly build houses for their supporters over the last 2 decades without proper planning or taking the consequences into account.