Frus­trat­ed by peren­ni­al floods, tears trick­led down Seer­a­ja Se­u­nar­ine’s cheeks as she re­count­ed wa­ter flow­ing in­to her home with the pass­ing of the In­vest 98L trop­i­cal wave.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Wood­land com­mu­ni­ty on Tues­day, the crew could not get to Se­u­nar­ine, as wa­ter from sev­er­al wa­ter­cours­es spilt on­to the road­way. Sit­ting up­stairs in her home, where she has been liv­ing since 1962, Se­u­nar­ine said she had to wait for her daugh­ter to see if any­thing down­stairs sus­tained dam­age af­ter flood­wa­ter en­tered. It was where she slept un­til Tues­day night.

Se­u­nar­ine said most of the flood­ing could have been avoid­ed if the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port cleaned the wa­ter­cours­es prop­er­ly and reg­u­lar­ly.

The riv­er flank­ing her home was bare­ly recog­nis­able, with grass and wa­ter lilies cov­er­ing most of what eyes could see.

Among the flo­ra gath­ered near the bridge was garbage.

“The Gov­ern­ment is not do­ing any­thing, so how would I feel? Any­time a lit­tle rain falls, it floods. Be­fore the month ends, it will have an­oth­er flood. Look at the road right there. Do you see there is wa­ter on the road? It had about so much wa­ter,” Se­u­nar­ine said, mea­sur­ing an arm’s length.

She claimed that when work­ers came to clean the riv­er at the be­gin­ning of the year, they sat for most of their shifts and left with­out much work.

Low­er down the road, Visham Mun­gal was pow­er wash­ing silt from his front yard af­ter three days un­der­wa­ter. A pump was still ex­tract­ing mud­dy wa­ter from the back of the yard, as the drains along Pluck Road were full.

Mun­gal said wa­ter came from the south­ern side of the Wood­land and in­to their homes over two days. He point­ed to a riv­er that au­thor­i­ties had not cleaned in months. 

Flood­wa­ters still cov­ered parts of Pluck Road yes­ter­day, caus­ing dri­vers of small ve­hi­cles to seek al­ter­na­tive routes. It was dif­fi­cult for those who had to trav­el; some wad­ed through the wa­ter to get home.

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny em­ploy­ees came to the res­cue of two old­er women who got out of a taxi af­ter the dri­ver de­clined to dri­ve through the flood. The work­ers made space in the com­pa­ny pick-up and took the women through the wa­ters and to their homes.

Mean­while, the force of flow in the South Oropouche Riv­er ex­ac­er­bat­ed struc­tur­al prob­lems with bridges along Boodoo Trace and Sanahie Trace.

Ba­daye Sook­nanan said the riv­er was un­der­min­ing the road­way con­nect­ing to the bridge along Sanahie Trace, and it was just a mat­ter of time be­fore some­one fell in the riv­er. Sook­nanan said some­one could die and wants ac­tion tak­en be­fore the bridge col­laps­es in­to the riv­er. In the mean­time, he wants warn­ing signs to alert mo­torists about the dan­ger.

He said, “The coun­ty peo­ple came, and I thought they clos­ing there, but how will we pass? The bridge in Boodoo Trace closed, so where will we pass?”