Tropical Storm Tomas Blows Over

From mid-day to late afternoon on Friday 29^th October there was a great state of panic amongst the residents of both islands.

Traffic was gridlocked.  Supermarkets, gas stations and stores were crowded. The bars and fast food restaurants also benefitted from the increased patronage of stranded and frustrated commuters.  Some private companies wanted to remain open but the worried parents among their workers wanted to collect their children.  Tempers flared and the phone network was jammed with anxious callers.

The great tragedy occurred in the schools.  Acting on the advice of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management, the Ministry of Education gave the order to close the schools at 1:00 p.m.  Thousands of frightened children were released into the general melee as their parents tried to reach but many were caught in the traffic pile ups.  A great many of them eventually reached home at about the same time as if school had remained open, after enduring inconvenience, frustration and bad weather getting there.

Had there been a more direct hit by the storm then public opinion would have focussed on the general lack of preparedness for the copious rains and high winds that would have devastated people living near the river banks and on the hillsides.  Tropical Storm Tomas instead took the always unpredictable path towards the north-west.  This spared Trinidad and Tobago, or did it?

We have persons in authority taking decisions that have unstudied effects on the children.  It is my view that the children should have been allowed to stay home on Friday.  It must make sense to avoid the ridiculous gridlock and panic by considering the timing of the announcements for preparations for the storm.  If the authorities were indeed planning to give the population 36 hours advanced warning to prepare for a credible threat of an approaching Tropical Storm then they should have considered not allowing the children to make the journey to school on that day. 

As it was, the panic and the resultant inconvenience was not a life lesson that our children should be learning or allowed to endure in the future.  I do not believe that this was the intention of the authorities.  Rather there should be a controlled response when people are told that there are 36 hours before a likely hit by a powerful storm and they should use the time before to batten windows, fill drinking water, secure 3 days supply of food and to assess whether they should find alternative accommodation away from low lying areas.  Four to six hours of that time should not be spent in traffic jams with frightened children.