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Monday, July 21, 2025

Farmers count their loses as Flooding hits rural areas

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20141114

Farm­ers suf­fered thou­sands of dol­lars in loss­es yes­ter­day af­ter their crops were de­stroyed by flood­wa­ters which al­so caused hav­oc in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties and homes in Ma­yaro and en­vi­rons.

Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Haz­arie Ramdeen said a team from the cor­po­ra­tion's dis­as­ter man­age­ment unit was out in the field help­ing res­i­dents."I have been re­ceiv­ing hourly re­ports. So far we have had re­ports of flood­ing in Guayagua­yare, Mafek­ing, Rio Claro, Plum Mi­tan, Bris­tol, La Brea Vil­lage, Navet and oth­er ar­eas. They are giv­ing out mat­tress­es and try­ing to help where they can," he added.

In some places, af­ter tor­ren­tial rain­fall, floods rose to waist-height.Vice-chair­man Glen Ram said the cor­po­ra­tion was al­so putting things in place to help some stu­dents of the Biche High School who were strand­ed. "It is bad," he said, but added an as­sess­ment of the loss­es and dam­age could on­ly be done when the wa­ter dis­si­pat­ed.Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare coun­cil­lor Ky­ron James said: "There have been nu­mer­ous in­stances of flood­ing, more than I have seen in a long while."He said the Ma­yaro Sec­ondary School was dis­missed ear­ly af­ter part of the road lead­ing to the school caved in.

"I drove on the road but I am not sure about the in­tegri­ty of it. If heavy rains con­tin­ue, there many be a pos­si­bil­i­ty that more of the road might cave in," he added.

Jan­ice Williams, a res­i­dent of Mis­chi­er Road, St Ann's Vil­lage, said her daugh­ter could not go to school."My whole wash­room flood­ed out, my garage flood­ed out, it (floods) near­ly reach in­side my house. I put chairs on bricks. The wa­ter was waist-high. It on­ly now start to go down," she said."We are fed up."That was the cry of Plum Mi­tan farmer Su­ma­tee Sookram yes­ter­day af­ter floods de­stroyed hun­dreds of crops and af­fect­ed over 100 farm­ers.She said her hus­band, De­osaran Sookram, tried to save their cu­cum­ber crop but to no avail.

This is not the first time the area's farm­ers have suf­fered loss­es be­cause of flood­ing.They com­plained that not enough was be­ing done to help them and even if they got com­pen­sa­tion it was usu­al­ly a lot less than their loss­es.Her hus­band said: "I in the cold in the flood about waist-high since 4 o'clock this morn­ing try­ing to save the crops... is three acres. We put out re­al mon­ey and we will not make it back now. Cu­cum­ber go­ing for $15 a pound. It ex­pen­sive and hard to main­tain."

He said he car­ried two pumps, a two-inch and a three-inch, to try to pump out the wa­ter but his at­tempts were use­less."If they could put a big pump to help we pump out the wa­ter. We get flood plen­ty time," he added.De­osaran said there were al­so hous­es in the area which were sur­round­ed by wa­ter.

Agen­cies warn of floods

The Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Of­fice is­sued a flood bul­letin around 11.30 am, say­ing be­cause of re­cent rain­fall peo­ple would ex­pe­ri­ence more pro­longed and wide­spread street and flash flood­ing, as well as river­ine flood­ing.Re­ports from the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency said some small rivers, par­tic­u­lar­ly in north-east­ern and cen­tral Trinidad, have over­spilled their banks, while wa­ter lev­els in the large rivers were sig­nif­i­cant­ly high and might reach thresh­old lev­els as a re­sult of ex­pect­ed run-off from the cur­rent rain­fall.

The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM ) said it was in con­tact with all first-re­spon­der agen­cies (TT Fire Ser­vices, TT De­fence Force and the mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions) so that im­me­di­ate as­sis­tance would be giv­en if need­ed.There were re­ports of flood­ing at Ma­yaro and en­vi­rons, San­gre Grande and en­vi­rons, Oropouche and a land­slide at Ba­lan­dra Beach Re­sort.Af­fect­ed res­i­dents can con­tact the ODPM's Cus­tomer Care Cen­tre at 511.


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