Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Res­i­dents of Wel­come Vil­lage, En­ter­prise, were left scram­bling to se­cure their homes against flood wa­ters af­ter the Cunu­pia Riv­er burst its banks and cov­ered their streets ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.

By noon, the wa­ter lev­el had risen sig­nif­i­cant­ly and the worst fear of many fam­i­lies was re­alised as the mud­dy, swirling wa­ter swept in­to their homes.

Res­i­dent and poul­try farmer, Pa­tri­cia Michael, woke up be­fore day­break to the sound of her 40-plus chick­ens squawk­ing in their pen.

"My hus­band and I had to get up and run out­side, on­ly to see the chick­en pen al­ready cov­ered in wa­ter and the chick­ens were climb­ing all over each oth­er to sur­vive.

"We had to kill every one of them, pluck them and store them in the freez­er," she said.

Her ducks, though, were fine as she said they seemed to en­joy the wa­ter.

She called on au­thor­i­ties to ad­dress the flood­ing that plagues res­i­dents every rainy sea­son.

"Some­thing needs to be done to ad­dress this. We can­not con­tin­ue to live like this and this is on­ly the first for this sea­son. As soon as rain falls the area floods."

She said her fam­i­ly moved to the area when she was a child and her ear­li­est mem­o­ries were of wad­ing through flood wa­ters to get home.

"It hap­pens year-af­ter-year and noth­ing is be­ing done. When there is school the chil­dren can't go.

"You can't leave your house and if you out­side the vil­lage when the riv­er over­flows you bet­ter be pre­pared to swim home or sleep out­side."

Fur­ther in­to the vil­lage, Sam Be­har­ry and his sons were lay­ing sand­bags across the front of their door­ways as the wa­ter con­tin­ued to rise.

Two streets away, Kei­th Sar­ran and his fam­i­ly bailed wa­ter out of their home with buck­ets for sev­er­al hours as they wait­ed for the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion's Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit (DMU) to reach them.

The DMU work­ers ar­rived around noon and be­gan work­ing on get­ting the wa­ter out of Sar­ran's home.

The floods are be­cause of the fail­ure by the Min­istry of Works to clean and de­silt the Cunu­pia Riv­er dur­ing the dry sea­son, leav­ing the wa­ter­course clogged and un­able to con­tain the vol­ume of wa­ter brought down by the rains, said coun­cil­lor for Long­denville/Tal­paro, Ryan Ram­per­sad.

He is a coun­cil­lor with the Cou­va /Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Ram­per­sad said he had made nu­mer­ous re­quests to the Drainage Di­vi­sion of the min­istry dur­ing the dry sea­son.

"It could be at­trib­uted to the non-clean­ing of the main wa­ter­cours­es in the area. We have been lob­by­ing with the Drainage Di­vi­sion. They would nor­mal­ly clean the main wa­ter­cours­es. That has not been done yet for this year," Ram­per­sad added.

How­ev­er, he said there was an­oth­er con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the floods.

He ex­plained: "We al­so have a lot of de­vel­op­ments tak­ing place in this area and Town and Coun­try keeps ap­prov­ing hous­ing lots in this area.

"This was his­tor­i­cal­ly a farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty. It was a basin for hold­ing wa­ter and now be­cause of the de­vel­op­ment in the area, dozens of hous­es are be­ing built every month." (See Page A11)