For the past few weeks, pol­i­tics and the state of emer­gency have been dom­i­nat­ing na­tion­al head­lines, so it would have been easy to miss the T&T Met Ser­vices (TTMA) an­nounce­ment of the start of the 2025 dry sea­son.

Even dur­ing less hec­tic news cy­cles, the ar­rival of the dry sea­son is not a de­vel­op­ment that at­tracts much at­ten­tion. Com­pared to the wet sea­son and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing hur­ri­cane sea­son, it is re­gard­ed as a less event­ful sea­son.

How­ev­er, this year’s fore­cast of “wet­ter than usu­al” con­di­tions re­sult­ing in re­duced bush­fire risk, is no rea­son for com­pla­cen­cy. There will still be hot spells, the oc­ca­sion­al plumes of Sa­hara dust and oth­er re­lat­ed con­di­tions.

In the com­ing weeks, every re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zen should be mon­i­tor­ing wa­ter lev­els in reser­voirs, fo­cus­ing on bush fire pre­ven­tion and pay­ing close at­ten­tion to air qual­i­ty. It is bet­ter to be pre­pared for any dry sea­son chal­lenges.

Ef­forts by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to pro­vide a con­sis­tent sup­ply of potable wa­ter should op­er­ate in tan­dem with those of the pub­lic to con­serve, store, and sus­tain­ably man­age sup­ply.

WASA has al­ready is­sued a dry sea­son ad­vi­so­ry and has start­ed rolling out a “Con­serve to­day … Se­cure to­mor­row” cam­paign to keep the pub­lic up­dat­ed on sup­ply chal­lenges, mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures, con­ser­va­tion tech­niques and reser­voir lev­els.

The util­i­ty, with new CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day at the helm, will face pub­lic scruti­ny and crit­i­cisms in those in­evitable pe­ri­ods of wa­ter short­ages and dis­rup­tions. Since most parts of the coun­try still do not ben­e­fit from a 24/7 pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply, there will have to be care­ful man­age­ment of this pub­lic util­i­ty and its mes­sag­ing in the crit­i­cal days and weeks ahead.

But WASA isn’t the on­ly en­ti­ty with a crit­i­cal role to play this dry sea­son. 

The T&T Fire Ser­vice con­tin­ues to grap­ple with ma­jor prob­lems that hin­der its abil­i­ty to re­spond to emer­gen­cies, in­clud­ing a lack of suit­able trucks and a short­age of per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE), which can be ex­ac­er­bat­ed dur­ing the dry sea­son.

The in­creased risk of bush­fires, which can oc­cur due to var­i­ous rea­sons, from cli­mate change to hu­man er­ror, puts added pres­sure on fire of­fi­cers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those as­signed to poor­ly equipped sta­tions.

There will be a need for more re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour from cit­i­zens who should be en­cour­aged to take sim­ple pre­ven­tive mea­sures to re­duce the sever­i­ty of de­struc­tive bush­fires.

For ex­am­ple, house­hold­ers can play their part by keep­ing their prop­er­ties and sur­round­ing spaces clear of dried veg­e­ta­tion and items that could pose a fire haz­ard.

Sim­ple but ef­fec­tive ways to re­duce the prob­a­bil­i­ty of start­ing a bush­fire in­clude not toss­ing lit cig­a­rettes out of cars, es­pe­cial­ly in ar­eas with veg­e­ta­tion. These are the small things that can spark fires.

As much as pos­si­ble, avoid set­ting fires to burn garbage, par­tic­u­lar­ly if it in­cludes high­ly com­bustible ma­te­r­i­al such as pa­per or fab­ric that has been soaked in oil or gaso­line.

Any burn­ing of waste should be done in an ap­pro­pri­ate place, away from all veg­e­ta­tion and should nev­er be left un­at­tend­ed. 

The bot­tom line is that ad­just­ments have to be made with this change of sea­son, and it can­not be left on­ly to the au­thor­i­ties to en­sure that safe con­di­tions are main­tained across the coun­try.

Re­cent ex­pe­ri­ences show that too heavy a re­liance on WASA and the Fire Ser­vices can be risky dur­ing dry sea­son emer­gen­cies.