2003 dry season — most tragic story

THE 2003 dry season was the biggest, most disastrous, most tragic story of the year. It wasn’t the worst dry season on record. 1986 holds that dubious distinction; that was the year when Piarco had to be shut down because pilots couldn’t see to land planes due to the smoke from bush fires.

However, 2003 came next in the record books as the most severe dry season. Calls in the Press for flying tankers and water bombers to ‘out’ the raging fires went unheeded because neither the Forestry Division nor the Fire Services could afford them. Why should this be when it appears that, once again, money is no problem? Because, finding the Division had hardly touched money allocated to fight bush fires in ‘02, the Ministry of Finance, or whichever Government department decides which Division shall have how much for what, decided to cut the fire fighting budget for ‘03.

Shut up in their towering of air-conditioned offices, it seems that bureaucrats ignore both weather patterns and the Met Office predictions. The cynical might say, so far as the Met office is concerned, one could hardly blame the bureaucrats. In the bureaucratic mind set, if the money wasn’t used last year (when it rained, on and off right through the ‘02 dry season), it certainly wouldn’t be needed in ‘03. Yet everyone knows there’s no accounting for weather. And so we lost hundreds upon hundreds of hectares of forest, of the most economical methods of flood and erosion control, and  fresh water production.

On a more optimistic note, Trinidad’s first Arboretum was opened to the public in Chaguaramas. The ‘trees’ in the parkland are mostly that giant grass, bamboo — however, this need not deter those wanting to picnic in the shade, to raise their eyes to the surrounding bush-covered hills, or those with time to explore a nature trail or two in Chag. Around Carnival time this column explored the deplorable habits of the nation’s cars taking over from their drivers to career, totally out of control, into bridges, culverts, medians and T&TEC poles that lie in wait on either side of the nation’s highways to collect tolls on human limbs and lives . . .

About Carnival time, too, the dreaded Tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus was found zinging its way around Chaguaramas. The Insect Vector Division went on full alert because the Tiger mosquito is the vector (it carries the viruses) for dengue, yellow fever, Equine Encephalitis and West Nile virus. It is called tiger because, like Aedes it’s striped, it feeds by day and night as well as dawn and dusk, is as at home in the bush as in villages, towns and suburbs; it breeds like crazy using any clean puddle of water it can find — even the inside of a discarded bag of potato chips.

The Insect Vector Division reckoned they’d seen off the Tiger that, they reckoned, had stowed away aboard yachts. However local prophets of doom and gloom reckoned that it could well have escaped from the Yachties out to the bush — and how, they ask, could you spray all the bush in Chag? CEPEP burst into being in March with what appeared to be gangs of erstwhile Special Works, DEWD, URP, etc etc, cleaning, cutting, chopping and painting almost everything in sight. Newsday managed to save the US Ambassador’s backyard from a Fate Worse Than Death at the hands of some too enthusiastic CEPEP workers. Thanks to the rainy season Flagstaff Hill has now reverted to bush with a sizeable plantation of castor oil plants, the source of ricin, one of the deadliest poisons known to man: 25 years ago, on September 11, 1978 (now there’s an ominous date for you) a pellet of ricin, shot from the tip of a spring-loaded umbrella was used to assassinate the Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, near London’s Waterloo Bridge.

Port Galeota occupied this column through August and September. We were warned that that bird had already flown, we were flogging a dead horse, the deal was already done — and so it appears from rumours of appointments to the Board of the proposed port. One weeps (one can do no more) for the fishermen and the natural environment of Guaya . . . In October we were stunned to find the North East corner of Trinidad suffering drought while Port-of-Spain was under water. Come the end of the year and a tour of WASA’s facilities we heard from CEO Errol Grimes that rainfall patterns have changed this year, that the rains aren’t falling in the catchment areas where they’re most needed.

There is some muttering of global warming and the US that refuses to sign the Kyoto agreement or give  up one iota of conspicuous consumption of greenhouse gas-emitting energy for  industry. It was logging and the state of rural roads in St David that drew Newsday to Naranjo — for a change, we like to think we were able to make a difference. The loggers withdrew, a bridge was repaired, residents in the scattered communities can now get themselves and their goods to market. And, with the exception of the ongoing WASA series, that about wraps it up for 2003.