Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Tor­ren­tial rains caused hav­oc in sev­er­al parts of South Trinidad, de­stroy­ing crops, live­stock and prop­er­ty.Af­fect­ed peo­ple were still count­ing their loss­es last night which they es­ti­mat­ed to be in the hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars.Res­i­dents of Al­ta Gar­cia Trace were ma­rooned in their homes and chil­dren from the San Fran­cique Hin­du and Pres­by­ter­ian schools were un­able to get to class­es.

The Fyz­abad An­gli­can Sec­ondary School was al­so flood­ed out and chil­dren were forced to stay in their class­rooms un­til the flood wa­ters sub­sided.Ar­eas in Pe­nal in­clud­ing Jokhan Trace, Ra­ju Trace, Clarke Street, Dor­bas­sa Trace and San Fran­cique Main Road were af­fect­ed by the floods.

Pamela Man­ick, the own­er of Jags Food Val­ue Su­per­mar­ket in San Fran­cique, was in the process of sell­ing re­porters um­brel­las when the floods be­gan cas­cad­ing in­to the store around 10 am. Man­ick and her hus­band, Jagdish, quick­ly be­gan pack­ing sacks of rice, flour and pet food on high­er shelves. With­in min­utes the store had over two feet of wa­ter. Her neigh­bour, Mahin­dra Gopie, wad­ed through the flood wa­ter to help stack cas­es of drinks in front of the store in an at­tempt to block the wa­ter.

"This is the first time that we got flood­ing this way. Nor­mal­ly we get floods on the roads but not in here," Man­ick said.She could not as­sess her loss­es. Chan­ri­ka Gopie, who lives at 284 San Fran­cique Road, said his wa­ter pump, tele­vi­sion, bed and fur­ni­ture set were de­stroyed by the floods."My son's apart­ment was flood­ed. The rains fell for a few hours and we could not sal­vage any­thing be­cause the room is locked. We do not know what else from his apart­ment were dam­aged," Gopie said.

Nar­ine De­onar­ine said the floods oc­curred be­cause of poor drainage. He said when the drains were con­struct­ed they were not made wide enough to ac­com­mo­date the wa­ter flow."In some ar­eas there are no box drains. They need to com­plete the projects and widen the cylin­ders so that the wa­ter will flow," De­onar­ine said.

Afzal Ho­sein al­so said it was the biggest flood the res­i­dents had seen with­in re­cent times. "Peo­ple can­not come out of their homes. No­body ex­pect­ed it to flood so quick­ly. The rains took us by sur­prise."Res­i­dent Har­riper­sad Lal Dook­ie said the re­cent land clear­ing for the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion could be re­spon­si­ble for most of the flood­ing. He said the flood gates were dys­func­tion­al and hun­dreds of acres of prime agri­cul­tur­al lands were de­stroyed be­cause of the in­fil­tra­tion of salt wa­ter.

Floods were al­so re­port­ed at Low­er Bar­rack­pore. Dis­as­ter man­age­ment teams from the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion spent hours tour­ing the flood-rav­aged com­mu­ni­ties, dis­trib­ut­ing food stuff and mat­tress­es.

MP: Don't blame high­way work

Fyz­abad MP Chan­dresh Shar­ma yes­ter­day de­nied re­ports that the high­way con­struc­tion was re­spon­si­ble for the flood­ing at Khan Trace, Mar­ket Street and Mon De­sir Road. He said a drain was be­ing built close to the Fyz­abad An­gli­can Sec­ondary School and this failed to chan­nel the wa­ter flow."It is an in­com­plete project. It is not un­usu­al for flood­ing to oc­cur once we get this lev­el of rain­fall."

He added that vil­lagers were quick to unite to help each oth­er. He said state agen­cies such as Cepep, URP, Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness, dis­as­ter man­age­ment teams and mem­bers of par­lia­ment worked to­geth­er to bring im­me­di­ate re­lief.

Watch out for land­slides

Chief Me­te­o­rol­o­gist Sha­keer Baig said yes­ter­day that the rain­fall was due to the pas­sage of the In­ter-Trop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ). He ad­vised cit­i­zens to be wary of pos­si­ble land­slides and gusty winds. He al­so warned cit­i­zens to be alert to elec­tri­cal dis­charges from thun­der­clouds.