By Stephen Kangal
August 31, 2018
It is now compulsory that tribal politics aside, the capital of T&T must be removed in the medium term from its present earthquake- susceptible location in POS to one that is less vulnerable to the damaging effects of a seven and more seismic event that is nearer and less deeper than last Tuesday’s traumatic wake-up call.
This must be a first step of any natural disaster mitigation/avoidance strategy because were a strong above seven earthquake to strike again, POS will sink as proposed by the UWI seismologist, Dr Illias Papadoupoulos.
There is also no confidence-building evacuation plan from POS given its constricted location.
T&T will come to a screeching disruptive halt with Point Lisas saving us.
All our records, banking information, governmental infrastructure including the Central Bank will be lost forever in a water soaked grave in the Gulf of Paria under which lies a line of geological/seismic weakness owing to the fracturing convergence of the Caribbean and South American Plates as shown in the image below courtesy of Wikipedia.
In addition to the annihilation threat posed by the inevitable big earthquake, POS is also exposed to the potential disastrous effects of a Gulf of Paria-generated post-earthquake, plate tectonics tsunami that can also make the capital inoperative and strangled to extinction.
Accordingly having regard to the frequency of disruptive flooding occurrences after small showers, the capital must be transplanted to a more sustainable location in Orange Grove for example.
This is an urgent national imperative since we must undertake planning and contingency measures to pre-empt and/or reduce the potential disaster that the expected ”Big One” threatens against the integrity, existence and continuing viability of T&T, God being our keeper.
One major earthquake and the city need to move. It was move once from St.Joseph for the same reason a massive earthquake flatten the then capital.
The plates are always shifting, so where do you put the city to avoid such calamity in the future? The whole nation is an earthquake zone… maybe move it to Toco.
Uncle Poopha seismologists predict that POS is water saturated having been built on the sea and that an above seven that is nearer and shallower will see POS and its buildings sink into the Gulf of Paria and loss of our heritage and archival information. St Joseph then was poorly built but today we have building codes to resist earthquake damage. The new capital in Orange Grove will be less susceptible to earthquake destruction because of the mountain type soil (Less saturation) and an infrastructure that is established using modern standards of earthquake resistant buildings from which we can salvage our national data bank. Samjhay Poopha?
I am not fully convince but certainly archives should be preserved in a safer location. But this government will not do anything to preserve the archives. We need to take all book records and digitalize it putting it on the internet. Especially the indentureship records. Over time and with a fire, earthquake or flood it will disappear. I would like to see students from UWI do the digitalizing work. Perhaps taking one book or several books at a time and doing the work.
Guyana had an ambitious plan to ditigitalized their indentureship records but it fell through. Perhaps Steven with your astute mind and political influence, you can sow the seeds before it’s all gone.
Was there not a plan to move the capital to Wallerfield? Surely a better location than on the good agricultural lands in Orange Grove?