By SEAN DOUGLAS Saturday, August 15 2009

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Flood on Main Road: A view of downtown Port-of-Spain from the overpass shows areas of flooding which was heaviest on the Eastern Main Road. ...

GOVERNMENT agencies have told Newsday they had done their best to help alleviate the floods caused by yesterday’s downpour in Port-of-Spain, although at least one critic said this was inadequate.

Port-of-Spain Mayor Murchison Brown at 3.40 pm told Newsday the flood-waters were receding. “My information is that the East Dry River in parts overcame its banks. However the pumps at Abattoir Road are working to pull the water, 17,000 gallons per minute. The rain was torrential and fell for a long time, so there will be a measure of flooding but once the rainfall subsides, the water will also subside.”

Brown said he was monitoring reports from his engineers and his disaster coordinator.

Asked to predict the rest of the day, he said,“I hope we don’t have any more rain like we did earlier.” He said earlier yesterday he had lent his council’s Vac Master machine for unclogging drains to the Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation (which was badly hit in St Augustine and environs by storms and subsequent flooding last Monday and Thursday).

The Vac Master regularly clears the underground drains of the capital, Brown said, usually working two shifts a day, morning and late-evening. It’s been around a while, he added. Asked how had the Port-of-Spain drains held up yesterday, he said the drains have been in service for many years.

“They need to be upgraded. Yesterday we got volumes of water we have never got before. Once we clear the drains, the water will eventually subside. We have challenges we are working on. I don’t think any piece of machinery will stop flooding. As the rainfall subsides, the flooding will too.” A spokesman said Local Government Minister, Hazel Manning, had seen flooding in San Juan on her way to Port-of-Spain from a function in Chaguanas.

Manning had been keeping in touch with the Office of Disaster Preparedness (ODPM), the Mayor of Port-of-Spain, and her Chief Disaster Officer, Anthony Gittens.

“They are mobilising resources, to make things better. She’s being kept in the loop by her Chief Disaster Officer.”

The source said agencies such as the Port-of-Spain Corporation have been very much in action. “She has been in touch with them.”

The spokesman said Gittens has been in touch with all the disaster specialists in all the different corporations.

“It’s a new unit but they are doing their best. Our chief disaster person has been really busy these last few days and has been keeping the minister informed.”

Ministry of Works and Transport parliamentary secretary, NiLeung Hypolite, at about 4.30 pm told Newsday the PTSC had earlier temporarily suspended its bus service for about 20 minutes because of high-levels of flood waters at the stretch of the Priority Bus Route (PBR) between the Port-of-Spain Central Market and Morvant Junction. “The service is operating now,” said a relieved Hypolite. He said traffic was moved off the Eastern Main Road and the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway onto the PBR and hindering the flow of buses.

Overall, he said (that by about 4.30 pm) the vehicles on the PBR were moving more freely than earlier during the flood waters.

Downtown Owners and Merchants Association (DOMA) head, Gregory Aboud, however, said the annual flooding threatens the viability of Port-of-Spain as a business area.

“It’s sad that the alleviation of flooding in Port-of-Spain and other areas seems to have attracted little attention from the authorities. Simple initiatives and inexpensive construction work could alleviate almost all of the recent flooding in Port-of-Spain and Central Trinidad.” Lamenting the awful floods of November 2008, he said, “While previously unheard of, this now seems likely to occur again at any moment.”