PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC):
HEAVY RAINS associated with late-season depression pounded Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) and St. Vincent yesterday, triggering landslides and flooding, destroying bridges and forcing the evacuation of a number of schools.
The system was expected to develop into Tropical Storm Gama last night. It would become the 24th storm in a record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season.
STUDENTS MAROONED
Trinidad's Ministry of Education said that 70 students, marooned after a bridge linking a school in Matlock, south of Port-of-Spain, had been washed away, were rescued by members of the coastguard and the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force.
It said that other schools had to be closed for clean-up operations after flood waters caused a pile-up of debris. In neighbouring Tobago, the National Emergency Management Agency called for the closure of two schools affected by flood waters.
In St. Vincent, landslides destroyed three houses near the capital and rivers breached their banks, cutting access to several roads, said St. Vincent's director of the National Emergency Management Organisation, Howie Prince.
Two fishermen were camping with eight other men, when they disappeared in a mudslide near Rocky Bay on the Grenadine island of Bequia.
Parliamentary representative for the Matlock area in T&T, Sports Minister Roger Boynes, said that apart from the bridges being washed away, there were numerous landslides and most of the road network had been affected.
LANDSLIDES
"We have experienced several landslides," Boynes told local radio, saying also that fishermen in the area had also suffered as a result of the rains.
The tropical depression, which formed Sunday, was expected to be south of Jamaica by the end of the week, over Caribbean waters still warm enough to feed a major hurricane, said Stacy Stewart of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
- The Associated Press contributed to this story.
