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Thursday, May 22, 2025

1,000 homes under floodwaters as Caroni River overflows

by

Otto Carrington
1020 days ago
20220805

Many homes in Ca­roni Vil­lage were un­der wa­ter yes­ter­day, af­ter the Ca­roni Riv­er broke its banks overnight, leav­ing a dozen streets flood­ed and over 1,000 res­i­dents af­fect­ed.

The riv­er over­flowed due to per­sis­tent rains on Wednes­day in­to Thurs­day.

Res­i­dents were still as­cer­tain­ing the cost of their loss­es when Guardian me­dia vis­it­ed, but blamed the lack of in­fra­struc­ture work along the Ca­roni Riv­er bank and unau­tho­rised and un­planned de­vel­op­ment along the bank as the cause.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia mere me­ters from where the river­bank was breached, how­ev­er, Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly blamed the ex­ces­sive flood­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty on a lack of main­te­nance of the sluice gates of the Ca­roni Riv­er.

“Yes­ter­day, mid­day and last night, what we saw was that due to a lack of main­te­nance of the sluice gates on the Ca­roni Riv­er bank, wa­ter from the Ca­roni Riv­er, even be­fore it top­pled the ac­tu­al height of the bank, the lack of func­tion­ing sluice gates, wa­ter start­ed to fill. When the ac­tu­al riv­er wa­ter start­ed to rise to such heights, it top­ples over the height of the river­bank, then it starts to cross on­to the street be­yond and come in,” Ram­bal­ly, who stayed overnight Thurs­day with the res­i­dents to bring some lev­el of re­lief, said.

Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh, who lives in the af­fect­ed area, added that gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions need to work with the MP and the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man, since the is­sue needs a dual ef­fort.

“We would ex­pect that when the wa­ter sub­sides, the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion un­der­goes a very thor­ough flood as­sess­ment of this area as it re­lates to pos­si­bly flood re­lief grants for those who would have been im­pact­ed as a re­sult of the un­fore­seen flood­ing and in ad­di­tion to that, to en­sure that they use their cesspool trucks to car­ry out an im­me­di­ate emp­ty­ing of the cesspools in this par­tic­u­lar ju­ris­dic­tion and al­so a thor­ough spray­ing of the area,” In­dars­ingh said.

But those af­fect­ed got some re­lief from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, as a portable pump was placed in the area to help pump wa­ter out of the com­mu­ni­ty. This, how­ev­er, was hin­dered some­what as the wa­ter lev­el was not high enough to al­low the pump to op­er­ate at op­ti­mal lev­el.

Res­i­dent Mitchell Ram­nath said the pump sent by the min­istry was not of much help to the com­mu­ni­ty.

“It has been since 10 o’clock in the morn­ing yes­ter­day (Thurs­day) the wa­ter has been ris­ing, they brought a pump to try to send down the wa­ter. I left them at 4.30 am and by the time I came out here at 8 o’clock this morn­ing, the wa­ter had dou­bled in vol­ume ca­pac­i­ty,” he said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Lar­ry Kow­lessar, said he was hop­ing flood­ing could be al­le­vi­at­ed in the area, as his home had been af­fect­ed by flood­wa­ters for yet an­oth­er time. He said he was un­able to go out to work yes­ter­day, adding gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives had vis­it­ed be­fore the flood­wa­ters came but their promis­es were emp­ty.

“Since yes­ter­day, we have seen sev­er­al peo­ple known and un­known, com­ing tak­ing pic­tures, ask­ing ques­tions, back and forth, mak­ing promis­es and that’s the end of the sto­ry,” he said.

He added that the is­sue was not with the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment but a mat­ter of ne­glect and mis­placed pri­or­i­ties.

“At this point in time, there might be hard­ly an­oth­er area in this coun­try fac­ing flood, we should not have flood as well, but from 2017, be­cause of cli­mate change and things like that, we re­alise that the vol­ume of wa­ter now com­ing from the riv­er and wher­ev­er and in­to the riv­er is just too much for this lit­tle drain 40 years ago, which has out­grown its use­ful­ness.”

But he said the so­lu­tion is not over­ly com­pli­cat­ed.

“All this needs is an­oth­er cylin­der un­der the road, side by side to the cur­rent one and that drain to be opened about 46 feet wide. We will have no need for any pump or dra­ma, noth­ing like that. The road here to put that in is about 14 feet in width, so we are talk­ing about 14 feet of work, that is not go­ing to be ex­pen­sive and this has been hap­pen­ing for many, many years.”

The res­i­dents hope a so­lu­tion can be found and with clean-up teams from the cor­po­ra­tion and min­istry de­ployed in the area, were pray­ing that the wa­ter sub­sided so that their con­cerns about the river­bank can be rec­ti­fied.

Mean­while, res­i­dents of Ibis Gar­dens yes­ter­day raised con­cerns that the Ca­roni Riv­er would burst its banks and flood the 200 or so hous­es in their com­mu­ni­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to the res­i­dents, the river­bank, which was some 20 feet wide be­fore, has now been nar­rowed to 18 inch­es.

The res­i­dents said the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port was in­formed about the is­sue two months ago but noth­ing has been done to cor­rect the prob­lem to date. And with the riv­er swelling due to heavy rains on Thurs­day night, the res­i­dents were fear­ful that they would be flood­ed out.


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