For hundreds of residents in low-lying areas near the Caroni River basin, Saturday will be a day to hose down the slush, spray disinfectant and remove items destroyed by the water which began to seep into their homes early on Friday.
Torrential, persistent showers across the entire country on Thursday morning dumped significant volumes of rain, which overspilled the the country's largest river and several of its tributaries.
Luckily, water began to recede with two low tides on Friday and the rain gods heard the cries of the residents, many of whom were devastated by the horrific floods of 2018, which destroyed all of their household items.
Some residents had to be temporarily evacuated from their homes and others transported on high vans to get home. Many villagers parked their cars on the main road to prevent flood damage.
Family pets and livestock were also secured on higher ground, while stray pothounds waded in the dirty water.
[caption id="attachment_904347" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Families from Esperanza Trace in San Raphel wait for floodwaters that have blocked the roadway in Las Lomas to recede so that they may access their homes on Thursday evening. - ROGER JACOB[/caption]
Other parts of the country such as Sangre Grande, Las Lomas, Manuel Congo, Debe, Penal, Woodland, Barrackpore and South Oropouche were also inundated by floods, as they have been whenever there is torrential rain, which also forced the closure of some vaccination sites.
The flooding, said to be the result of housing development, slash-and-burn farming, illegal quarrying, unapproved development, failure to replant trees and degrading of the hills in Maraval and Diego Martin, also left a deluge of debris in its wake earlier this week.
The Meteorological Service issued a warning that many watercourses in Trinidad were on the brink of breaching their banks as of midnight on Thursday, and later extended the warning until 4 pm on Saturday.
In a release, it said up to 3.5 inches of rain fell in some parts of the country between Wednesday and Thursday and warned that with high tide, flooding was possible in low-lying areas.
Mala Ramkissoon, one of the long-time residents of El Carmen Village, just east of St Helena junction, said she and her family were awake from just after midnight, when they began to notice water rising around their one-storey home.
Ramkissoon said her family was alerted shortly after midnight that the river had overspilled its banks and water was coming from east of El Carmen towards their home.
"We had to wake all night because we did not know what to expect. We wake whole night monitoring the water to see what was happening.
"Then the water start. When we got up about 5.30 this morning, water started to come all through the garage and the back, so we started to raise everything like the washing machine, fridge. We still monitoring to see how high it will come," she said during an interview on Friday morning.
