Res­i­dents of Pe­nal, Bar­rack­pore and Debe woke up in shock yes­ter­day af­ter three hours of heavy overnight show­ers on Tues­day left their homes sub­merged in two to three feet of flood­wa­ter.

Many were ma­rooned in their homes, un­able to even ven­ture out­side, af­ter wide­spread flood­ing in those ar­eas.

In Sam­my West Trace, the force of the flood­wa­ter caused a wall to col­lapse on­to the prop­er­ty of me­chan­ic Naresh Ma­haraj. He said a near­by hill­side be­came wa­ter­logged and the force of the dirt pushed over the wall, dam­ag­ing tools.

“We had a van parked here but for­tu­nate­ly it was not dam­aged. It got a lot of mud on it,” Ma­haraj said.

In Ra­hamut Trace, Mar­i­lyn Boodoo and her fam­i­ly were in­un­dat­ed with over three feet of wa­ter in­side their home. The fam­i­ly ur­gent­ly re­quest­ed a pump from the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit to mit­i­gate the dam­age.

Along Pe­nal Rock Road near the five-mile mark, over two feet of wa­ter re­mained on the street, stretch­ing for over a mile, mak­ing Good­man Trace im­pass­able.

At Ra­goo­nanan Trace, Pe­nal, Si­mi Ja­mu­na and Roger Mans­ingh hasti­ly board­ed up their pluck­shop as the low-ly­ing ar­eas be­came in­un­dat­ed by flood­wa­ter. 

Mans­ingh blamed the flood­ing on the per­sis­tent is­sue of clogged drains.

“Every year it’s the same kind of floods we get. We have moved out the poul­try stocks and we are pray­ing for this wa­ter to go down,” he said.

At Low­er Bar­rack­pore, an ex­ca­va­tor was cov­ered as the riv­er near the Mon­key Town Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School rose. The flood­ing got worse in some ar­eas as the day pro­gressed.

At Mulc­hand Trace, Suni­ta Ba­choo shared her dis­tress. “Even if you come out of here in the trace from Bikah Trace, the wa­ter is high. If you have an emer­gency, you can­not pass here. We got up this morn­ing and there was less wa­ter than this. Right now, wa­ter is com­ing up, and we can­not pass here. Some­times the wa­ter comes in­side the house and kitchen,” she said.

Ba­choo said while this was the first flood­ing of the year, it was a re­cur­ring prob­lem.

“Every year, it’s flood up­on flood,” she lament­ed. “We need prop­er drainage,” she lament­ed.

In Good­man Trace, Pe­nal, Ram­raj Gob­erd­han who is wheel­chair bound, ex­pressed his frus­tra­tion.

“We can­not stop any­thing about it. We have to cope with it,” Gob­erd­han said.

He de­scribed the chal­lenges faced by res­i­dents, in­clud­ing be­ing un­able to reach their homes af­ter work, the risk to pets and live­stock, and even nav­i­gat­ing through flood­ed ar­eas in his wheel­chair.

Ash­ton Isaac of Good­man Trace was trapped in his house and afraid of what the flood­wa­ters would do.

“Right now we are ma­rooned here. Every time the rain falls, this is the out­come,” Isaac said. “So far, we are hop­ing this wa­ter will go down. Just now, I have to evac­u­ate. I am go­ing to lose every­thing else.”

From dawn, the chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Gow­tam Ma­haraj and his team toured the flood zones bring­ing re­lief to scores of res­i­dents. Ma­haraj em­pha­sised the ur­gent need for a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to ad­dress the flood­ing is­sues.

“We want to en­sure that all nat­ur­al wa­ter­cours­es are cleared. We want all hands on deck, es­pe­cial­ly the Min­istry of Works, the Drainage Di­vi­sion, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Town and Coun­try Plan­ning, all agen­cies,” Ma­haraj said.

He added that heavy equip­ment was on stand­by to clear wa­ter­cours­es while the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment team has been as­sist­ing res­i­dents. 

He called on Gov­ern­ment to re­lease the $21 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed in the last fis­cal bud­get for de­vel­op­men­tal projects, stress­ing the im­por­tance of time­ly in­ter­ven­tion to pre­vent fu­ture floods.