After one hour of heavy rainfall, a deluge of flood waters gushed through La Romaine yesterday washing away three cars into the swollen Dumfries River and destroying poultry and household possessions.
The floods came suddenly and covered parts of Palmiste, Union Hall and Bamboo Village shortly after 1 pm.
The worst hit areas were Sunflower Drive and Arjoonsingh Trace, La Romaine.
The car park of V's Plaza at Union Hall was covered in over three feet of water, trees fell at Darsingh Trace, Siparia, while the Gordineaux River at Mosquito Creek spilled over onto the Southern Main Road.
The owner of the submerged cars, Ashram Boodoosingh, said he parked his Nissan Note, Lancer and a Toyota Corolla along Sunflower Drive before the heavy rains started. "Within a short space of time the river started to gush. All I could see were the hoods of the cars.
"One car got chocked on the bridge and the other two got chocked on each other, otherwise they would have washed away completely," Boodoosingh said.
Saying the drains were not cleaned and the inverts needed to be widened, he called on Government to construct better box drains in the area.
After the deluge, a backhoe was used to remove the cars from the river while a wrecker transported the vehicles to a nearby garage.
At Bamboo Junction, Jarvis Amichan said the floods brought snakes, centipedes and insects into residents' homes. About a dozen ducks and chickens also drowned in the raging waters.
"I killed snakes in my yard. The water was about four feet high but it went down quickly," Amichan recalled. Kumar Jones, of Arjoonsingh Trace, said his entire kitchen and bedroom were inundated with over four feet of water.
"This is the first time in a decade I get flooded. I don't expect to get any compensation but I will be happy if I can get a little help with my disability grant," Jones said.
A short distance away, Mannie Ramroop and his colleagues, who were preparing a nearby office for occupation, had to run to salvage their power tools when the floods came. "We had to run to take off the breaker because all the electrical sockets were covered in water," Ramroop said.
Several vehicles stalled in the floods, among them was a CRV owned by Dr Jehan Ali. He also said that poor drainage caused the floods.
"This also has to do with people's attitudes to disposing waste in the drains," Ali added.
A washing machine was seen bobbing in the water while several residents were seen waving from a distance as their homes were completely surrounded by water.
By 3 pm, most of the water had subsided.