Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Parts of the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road have caved fur­ther in­to the sea as flood­wa­ters con­tin­ued to rise in the area yes­ter­day, cov­er­ing miles of the road­way and leav­ing many cit­i­zens strand­ed.

Over the last two days, the vil­lagers have been bat­tling na­ture as the Or­toire Riv­er and Nar­i­va Swamp crossed their thresh­olds and flood­ed the road­way, caus­ing dev­as­ta­tion and up­root­ing trees, while five sec­tions of the road caved in to­wards the At­lantic Ocean.

In 2014, the vil­lagers liv­ing along the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro coast faced a sim­i­lar dis­as­ter. How­ev­er, the claimed the cur­rent sce­nario has been the worst.

The vil­lagers’ on­ly de­fence is plac­ing sand­bags to pre­vent the wa­ter from cross­ing in­to their homes but that has not been help­ful.

Vil­lager Win­ston Pan­cho, who has been pack­ing sand­bags for two days to slow the ris­ing wa­ter, told Guardian Me­dia, “The wa­ter lev­el dropped but as the rains con­tin­ue, the wa­ter is ris­ing and cur­rent­ly we are cur­rent­ly pack­ing three heights of sand­bags to pre­vent loss­es in our homes.”

He added, “This is the worst we have seen the wa­ters here and we will con­tin­ue to pro­tect our prop­er­ties. Al­ready, we have lost fur­ni­ture thus far and we are prepar­ing for the worst but hav­ing hopes that the wa­ter will go down.”

De­spite the road be­ing closed, many de­fied the Min­istry of Works or­der to see where the road caved in. But for those tak­ing the chance, a few were un­lucky, as their ve­hi­cles got stuck on the now treach­er­ous road­way.

San­gre Grande and Ma­yaro Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cials were out on the field ren­der­ing as­sis­tance to those who were strand­ed.

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray and Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir were al­so on the ground.

Rag­bir said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 res­i­dents were af­fect­ed and he urged the pub­lic and those liv­ing in the area to seek al­ter­na­tive routes.

“So, as we stand here and we have been tra­vers­ing the wa­ters since yes­ter­day and to­day (Thurs­day), I know chair­man can tell you that it has ac­tu­al­ly wors­ened. If you were to com­pare this to 2014, it means that 2014 would have been an iso­lat­ed event. This now has tra­versed the en­tire stretch, more or less, along Man­zanil­la, so many of the beach hous­es here have been in­un­dat­ed with flood­wa­ters and as you can see, the ve­loc­i­ty of the wa­ter, the en­er­gy of the wa­ter, what has hap­pened, it is tak­ing the sand away and it has tak­en the foun­da­tion where we stand right now, it’s a road has col­lapsed, more or less the en­tire road.”

Paray said the clo­sure of the road was af­fect­ing hun­dreds, not­ing it is both a pri­ma­ry and al­ter­nate route for all seek­ing to ac­cess the com­mu­ni­ty.

“I am urg­ing the Min­is­ter and in min­istry, as soon as the wa­ter dis­si­pates and the en­gi­neer­ing work can hap­pen, to take eva­sive, crit­i­cal ur­gent ac­tion to bring this road back up to some fea­si­ble means where we can get this traf­fic to and fro be­cause we can have a com­plete shut­down of com­merce in the Ma­yaro con­stituen­cy,” Paray said.

“I’m ask­ing on­ly the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Works and I’m ask­ing the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter to treat this as if this is the road by Peake’s Diego Mar­tin or Wright­son Road to give us some pri­or­i­ty. Please do not leave us iso­lat­ed as coun­try peo­ple here and think that we have this mass of land that is about four times the size of To­ba­go, the re­gion in which we en­com­pass, the peo­ple that work here, that lives and tra­verse here, and so I’m look­ing for­ward to a speedy so­lu­tion.”

SGRC chair­man Anil Juter­am said al­though the road was closed, many peo­ple were still us­ing it be­cause there were no bar­ri­ers in place.

He said the min­istry seemed to be asleep on the job since at the time he was be­ing in­ter­viewed, they had not seen min­istry en­gi­neers com­ing in to as­sess the dam­age.

How­ev­er, of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and PURE di­vi­sion were at the sites yes­ter­day do­ing nec­es­sary as­sess­ments.