Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Flood wa­ters rose in many parts of south Trinidad yes­ter­day af­ter sev­er­al hours of heavy rain­fall. Along the San Fran­cique Main Road small trees were up­root­ed close to Montoute Road and the An­tilles Recre­ation Ground turned in­to a murky brown lake. But while the floods quick­ly ran off in some ar­eas, res­i­dents of Al­ta Gra­cia Trace, San Fran­cique, were ma­rooned in their homes. Res­i­dent An­gela Odie said the wa­ter rose to more than four feet in front of her house and was not re­ced­ing. Wad­ing through the floods in tall rub­ber boots, Odie said for the past three weeks she had been un­able to leave her home.

"We can­not pass here...We have to pass in the bush­es up in the back to get out of here," she lament­ed. "All kinds of in­sects live in this wa­ter. We have snakes, scor­pi­ons and mos­qui­toes breed­ing here. I am fed up of this. It is af­fect­ing the chil­dren. My hus­band and I got dengue last year be­cause of it." Odie said dur­ing the past year, some­one who lived in the area had been back­fill­ing the la­goons to build hous­es, clog­ging the main wa­ter­way. "This area is a nat­ur­al wa­ter course for the la­goon and they blocked the drains and back­filled, so all the wa­ter from on top of the hills is com­ing down in my place," Odie said. Her daugh­ter-in-law, Vashti Ram­naw­al, said she had been forced to aban­don her house be­cause of the floods.

She said, "I lost every­thing in my house and right now there is sev­er­al feet of wa­ter in­side. We can­not go there. The wa­ter is stag­nat­ing now and it has no place to run." Odie said she had made re­ports at the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and at­tempts were be­ing made to in­ves­ti­gate and rec­ti­fy the mat­ter. The land de­vel­op­er yes­ter­day de­nied that the drains were blocked. At De­osaran Trace, San Fran­cique, flood wa­ters al­so rose. Res­i­dent Lal­be­har­ry De­osaran said the flood was caused by clogged drains. Teams from the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion were dis­patched yes­ter­day to in­ves­ti­gate the flood­ing. Chair­man of the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Vidya De­ok­iesingh, was at­tend­ing a meet­ing, but coun­cil­lor for the area Ivan Sin­clair said he planned to vis­it the flood-strick­en ar­eas be­fore com­ment­ing.