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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Flood wa­ters wreak hav­oc in Pa­lo Seco...

Students stranded

by

20160905

Hun­dreds of stu­dents could not go out for the open­ing of the new school term in Pa­lo Seco yes­ter­day, af­ter what res­i­dents de­scribed as a "scary storm" left them strand­ed in their homes.

Res­i­dents said some three hours of strong winds, thun­der and heavy rains brought flood wa­ters as high as six feet, cut­ting off sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties be­tween San­ta Flo­ra and La Ba­jos.

The sun was scorch­ing around noon when pen­sion­er Ear­line Har­ri­son brave­ly wad­ed through wa­ters that over­spilled from the Erin Riv­er to get to her home at No 4 Ext Road but her neigh­bours fur­ther down could not risk the chance as the bridge and drains were cov­ered in the swollen riv­er.

The Pa­lo Seco Sec­ondary School was sus­pend­ed around 11 am as the riv­er flank­ing it had over­flowed on­to the prop­er­ty. Some stu­dents had to wan­der around the town as they were un­able to get home. The pop­u­lar Pa­lo Seco Velo­drome, where many sport­ing stars de­vel­oped their skills, was trans­formed in­to a lake.

The Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit was seen meet­ing with res­i­dents but for many oth­ers the me­dia was the first on the scene to see their plight.

Min­istry of Works and Trans­port em­ploy­ee, Caius Alphon­so, sat in his yard for hours un­able to reach to work since his car could not even leave his yard. He said while floods were com­mon in his com­mu­ni­ty, this was one of the worst he had seen.

An ex­ca­va­tor, al­most ful­ly sub­merged at the riv­er's bank, was ev­i­dence that de­silt­ing of the riv­er was on­go­ing but ac­cord­ing to chair­man of com­mu­ni­ty group Peo­ple for Progress, Vic­tor Roberts, it came a lit­tle too late.

Roberts, who led the me­dia on a tour of the com­mu­ni­ty, said au­thor­i­ties failed to clear the wa­ter­cours­es dur­ing the dry sea­son when it would have been eas­i­er. He said res­i­dents have been plead­ing for years for the riv­er to be widened but it fell on deaf ears. He blamed the floods on a lack of prepa­ra­tion and the nar­row riv­er mouth near the Colum­bus Chan­nel.

He said about 3,000 peo­ple were af­fect­ed among the com­mu­ni­ties and said he was hold­ing MP Nicole Olivierre to her promise two weeks ago that she would en­sure all Gov­ern­ment agen­cies in the area per­formed their role.

He said the lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives were fail­ing the com­mu­ni­ties, es­pe­cial­ly since they knew the drainage could not han­dle the wa­ter ca­pac­i­ty.

The re­sult of the flood was chaot­ic for Mar­vin Mal­oney and his fam­i­ly, as an ad­join­ing riv­er dumped two feet of wa­ter in­to his house. He said he had nev­er seen the riv­er cleaned be­fore and now his liv­ing room set, stove, re­frig­er­a­tor, stereo and oth­er ap­pli­ances were all dam­aged.

He said a snake, rats and cock­roach­es had been seen in his yard and oth­er res­i­dents were fear­ful that if the rains re­turned it would wreak fur­ther hav­oc.

He ex­plained: "I left home this morn­ing to drop my two chil­dren to school around 8 o'clock. By the time I was drop­ping off my sec­ond youth, I got a call say­ing wa­ter, flood. There are al­ways floods in this area but it is the first time it came in­side and from just a few hours of rain."

Chair­man: Com­bi­na­tion of prob­lems

Chair­man of the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Leo Dood­nath, said a com­bi­na­tion of prob­lems led to yes­ter­day's flood­ing. He said both the cor­po­ra­tion, which is re­spon­si­ble for clear­ing mi­nor wa­ter cours­es and the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, which cleans the ma­jor rivers. were strapped for cash and labour.

He said wa­ter­cours­es were cleared dur­ing the dry sea­son but such projects need­ed to be done along­side the min­istry's sched­ule.

He said peo­ple were al­so still dump­ing old air­con­di­tion­ing units, re­frig­er­a­tors and tyres in the wa­ter­cours­es, caus­ing the rivers to dam. He said peo­ple were al­so cut­ting lands on the hill­side in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly.

How­ev­er, Dood­nath said the cor­po­ra­tion would con­tin­ue to clear the wa­ter­cours­es and has al­so set up an al­le­vi­a­tion of flood­ing com­mit­tee, com­pris­ing gov­ern­men­tal and non-gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies, with the view to cre­ate a man­u­al that would help cit­i­zens to mit­i­gate flood­ing.


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