Jensen La Vende

Af­ter yes­ter­day's down­pour, for the first time in 40 years the res­i­dents of Gloster Lodge Road, Gon­za­les, ex­pe­ri­enced flood­ing. Parts of down­town Port-of-Spain al­so flood­ed.Leon De Fre­itas said he had been liv­ing in the area for over 20 years and had nev­er be­fore ex­pe­ri­enced any­thing like it. He said the wa­ter rose to about three feet and forced its way in­to his yard and his neigh­bour's.

With no place for the ris­ing wa­ters to es­cape, the wall sep­a­rat­ing his home from his neigh­bour's col­lapsed. He said had he not re­spond­ed soon­er the dam­age could have been worse. As it was, he had to hold on to two 40-pound gas tanks that were float­ing away, while his neigh­bour had to move his car as the wa­ter was drag­ging it down the road.De Fre­itas' next-door neigh­bour, who said she did not want to be "in the news," said her three dogs, Max, Bel­la and Gin­ger, al­most drowned when the wa­ter came down.

De Fre­itas said that the length of time the rain fell and the nar­row drains were the two chief caus­es of the flood­ing, since there was no new de­vel­op­ment tak­ing place on the hills that could ac­count for the flood.High­er up the hill at Lange Street, David Ter­rence said he bailed out wa­ter for close to two hours, and his home was still flood­ed when the T&T Guardian ar­rived around 4 pm. He said road­works done out­side his home con­tributed to the floods, as work­men clogged the drains with emp­ty ce­ment bags.

Fur­ther up the hill at Ju­bilee Cres­cent, Fitzher­bert Phillips said he had lived there for the past 34 years and had nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced flood­ing be­fore. Phillips, a fa­ther of ten, said he had to make two holes two feet wide at the base of his home so that some of the wa­ter could es­cape.

May­or: Plans in the works

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Port-of-Spain may­or Ray­mond Tim Kee said there were plans un­der­way to end flood­ing in the cap­i­tal for good.He said he was not able to di­vulge what they were but they "would make the na­tion smile."Last No­vem­ber, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced a US$120 mil­lion loan from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, to help with a flood al­le­vi­a­tion plan for the cap­i­tal city.

Tim Kee said he was not sure what be­came of pre­vi­ous plans to al­le­vi­ate flood­ing by pump­ing the wa­ter di­rect­ly in­to the sea or through the con­struc­tion of storm drains. He said the flood­ing was noth­ing new and was linked to the high tide, which im­ped­ed the runoff in­to the sea.Tim Kee, along with coun­cil­lors Hillan More­an and Janelle Young, vis­it­ed the af­fect­ed res­i­dents, promis­ing re­lief.

The T&T Guardian saw a truck trans­port­ing peo­ple through the flood­wa­ters which reached an es­ti­mat­ed depth of two feet in sev­er­al parts of the city.At In­de­pen­dence Square, dead cock­roach­es were seen sprawled along the side­walk and peo­ple nav­i­gat­ed around them to get away from the flood. Oth­ers were seen tak­ing pho­tographs of the murky wa­ter.