Kevon Felmine

Sev­er­al roads in Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's con­stituen­cy of Siparia were trans­formed in­to rivers of murky flood­wa­ters and de­bris, as heavy rain­fall yes­ter­day wreaked hav­oc on the com­mu­ni­ty. Over a dozen fam­i­lies along the Pe­nal Rock Road had to re­move sludge, dam­aged fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances from their homes while oth­ers were left strand­ed.

Now res­i­dents are fear­ful of con­tin­ued rain, which they be­lieve will make their sit­u­a­tion worse. They are al­so afraid of an in­fes­ta­tion of ro­dents, pests and rep­tiles, as cock­roach­es were seen on the walls of many hous­es flee­ing the ris­ing flood­wa­ters.

Oth­er ar­eas af­fect­ed in­clude Bran­don Av­enue and Moolchan Road, and even the Pe­nal Rock Road Ceme­tery was sub­merged un­der sev­er­al feet of wa­ter. Say­ing their sit­u­a­tion was worse than in past years, many blamed it on the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion's fail­ure to clear their wa­ter­cours­es. How­ev­er, coun­cil­lor for the Quinam/Morne Di­a­blo dis­trict, Hy­acinth Ram­per­sads­ingh, at­trib­uted the floods to land de­vel­op­ers who were build­ing hous­es with­out Town and Coun­try ap­proval.

She said peo­ple's care­less dis­pos­al of garbage al­so con­tributed. Ram­per­sads­ingh said the main wa­ter­course which runs through the ceme­tery is cleaned reg­u­lar­ly but be­comes clogged by garbage. Fa­ther of two, Lar­ry Ar­joon, said he had to leave work ear­ly to help his wife clean up af­ter three feet of wa­ter flood­ed his home. Ar­joon said they lost a wa­ter pump, re­frig­er­a­tor, wash­ing ma­chine and sev­er­al oth­er items, which he es­ti­mat­ed at over $30,000.

"This thing has been go­ing on for a while but this is the worst now. Usu­al­ly when the floods come up it will come up to the shed and then it would stop. This is be­cause of all the grass in the drain. We have made com­plaints for the drains to be cleaned but they don't want to hear about any­thing. The drains def­i­nite­ly need clean­ing and they aren't wide enough," Ar­joon said.

He said it on­ly took an hour of rain for the flood­wa­ters to rush in­to his house. Mean­while, his neigh­bour Hu­bert Mo­han, who runs an elec­tri­cal re­pair shop, is count­ing his loss­es as the flood dam­aged sev­er­al ap­pli­ances which he had re­paired for clients. Hu­bert said his fur­ni­ture had be­come wa­ter-dam­aged and it would cost a sub­stan­tial amount to re­place them.

Ram­per­sads­ingh, wear­ing gar­den boots, vis­it­ed af­fect­ed res­i­dents to as­sess the dam­age. She said she is now seek­ing as­sis­tance to trench the main riv­er to al­le­vi­ate the flood­ing. "This is the main cause of flood­ing, but oth­er than that, land de­vel­op­ers are de­vel­op­ing land and sell­ing and peo­ple have been build­ing il­le­gal struc­tures on the land and block­ing up all the wa­ter cours­es.

"This is why the Pe­nal/Debe Cor­po­ra­tion is now work­ing hand in hand with EMA and Town and Coun­try so that we can come to­geth­er and set some kind of stan­dard in or­der to al­le­vi­ate some of this flood." She said CEPEP and URP gangs will be­gin a mas­sive clean-up of the drains, and Min­istry of Health staff are ex­pect­ed to spray the area.