Res­i­dents in sev­er­al parts of south Trinidad were left ma­rooned in their homes and mop­ping up flood­wa­ters from Fri­day’s tor­ren­tial rain­fall.

Some com­plained of the ex­pect­ed rise in the wa­ter around this time of the year in the Debe area but not to the ex­tent that they ex­pe­ri­enced. They said the run-off can take as much as four days be­fore they can see their front steps again.

Di­ana Beepath, of Seu­radge Trace, Debe, said they were ex­pect­ing the flood as they have seen no in­fra­struc­tur­al im­prove­ments or se­ri­ous at­tempts to ad­dress the prob­lem in the area in the past 20 years. She in­sist­ed that poor in­fra­struc­ture around the vil­lage has con­tributed to the flood­ing.

The vol­ume of wa­ter was un­able to flow through the wa­ter­course as an ac­tive trop­i­cal wave in­ter­act­ed with the In­tertrop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ) across the coun­try on Fri­day morn­ing.

A home in Seuradge Trace, Penal, affected by rising floodwaters on Saturday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

Beepath said, "Every oth­er day the wa­ter would rise, it is ter­ri­ble. Our ap­peals are go­ing on deaf ears. The cor­po­ra­tion (Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion) came and clean the drains, but no dif­fer­ence. That wa­ter would take two to three days to go down."

Beepath’s neigh­bour Leela Heer­alal said for the past 12 years any­time it rains, the area floods. Heer­alal said she lost sev­er­al of her live­stock and hatch­lings. Heer­alal is call­ing on the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to have bet­ter drainage con­struct­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty.

At North Trace, Bar­rack­pore, Dolchan Chan­barhan could not park his mo­tor ve­hi­cle at his home. He said the wa­ter was too high for him to dri­ve through, and he had to lose many days of work. Chan­barhan said the wa­ter around his home rose about four feet. He es­ti­mat­ed his loss­es at $16,000 as his wash­ing ma­chine, wa­ter pump and couch set have been dam­aged. He al­so lost live­stock.

Chan­barhan said, "Bad in­fra­struc­ture in the area, they changed some cylin­ders and put small­er ones and that can­not con­tain the amount of wa­ter com­ing through them. I called the coun­cil­lor and ODPM is snakes and scor­pi­ons we bounc­ing up. I build a wall and the wa­ter comes over the wall, that is how high the wa­ter ris­es."

Flood­ing was al­so re­port­ed at Rochard Dou­glas Road in Pe­nal, Nanan South Trace, Cun­jal South Trace, Gilbert Trace, and Oropouche South Trace in Bar­rack­pore.

Res­i­dents said coun­cil­lor Nicholas Kan­hai vis­it­ed the area.