For the sec­ond time in a week and the third time in Oc­to­ber, res­i­dents of Ca­roni Vil­lage were yes­ter­day in­un­dat­ed by flood­ing from the Ca­roni Riv­er and its trib­u­taries. Heavy rain­fall over the last week brought mul­ti­ple rivers across Trinidad to thresh­old lev­els, with the Ca­roni Riv­er breach­ing its banks this past week­end.

Ac­cord­ing to res­i­dents, flood­ing rose rapid­ly on Sun­day in­to yes­ter­day morn­ing, with one to three feet of wa­ter re­port­ed across parts of Ca­roni Vil­lage. In­ter­est­ing­ly, the rapid rise in wa­ter wasn’t a re­sult of the swollen Ca­roni Riv­er over­top­ping its over 10-foot banks. In­stead, ac­cord­ing to res­i­dent Mi­tra Ram­nath, the floods were due to a mal­func­tion­ing flood­gate on the Ca­roni Riv­er bank at New Street Ex­ten­sion, which was the cause of the flood­ing at the be­gin­ning of the month.

He said, “Wa­ter be­gan pour­ing in from around four Mon­day morn­ing.”

The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port dis­patched a flood pump to Ca­roni Vil­lage last Fri­day, which moved wa­ter out of Ca­roni Vil­lage and in­to the Guaya­mare Riv­er drainage basin. Ram­nath said the pump worked well over the week­end and was ac­tu­al­ly shut off on Sat­ur­day. But, he said the rains came Sat­ur­day night and Min­istry of Works and Trans­port per­son­nel were nowhere to be found to restart the pump. He said the per­son­nel re­turned on Sun­day and put the pump back on it worked well in­to the night, but un­ex­pect­ed­ly shut down yes­ter­day morn­ing as a del­uge of wa­ter moved in­to the Ca­roni Vil­lage.

Ram­nath ex­plained, “When they were mak­ing calls to find out what’s go­ing on, we were told through the grapevine that res­i­dents sab­o­taged the pump. You can’t sab­o­tage a pump that was leak­ing coolant, leak­ing fu­el and it’s an in­ter­nal part what the me­chan­ic said was wear and tear.”

By yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the pump was back in op­er­a­tion but the wa­ter rose up­wards of six inch­es in a short time. Ram­nath added that flood­ing in Ca­roni Vil­lage was a re­cur­ring is­sue and res­i­dents are frus­trat­ed and tired.

Ef­forts to reach Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan un­suc­cess­ful.