RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Flood­wa­ters surged across the Pe­nal/Debe re­gion yes­ter­day, prompt­ing lo­cal au­thor­i­ties to de­clare a dis­as­ter zone as re­lent­less rain­fall sub­merged roads, left res­i­dents strand­ed, and forced stu­dents to scram­ble for emer­gency trans­porta­tion.

Ris­ing wa­ters on Pe­nal Rock Road, Best Street, Craw­ford Street, and oth­er low-ly­ing ar­eas trapped many in their homes and work­places, cut­ting off ac­cess to es­sen­tial ser­vices and reg­u­lar trans­porta­tion.

Chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Gow­tam Ma­haraj, be­gan tour­ing at 5 am, and just af­ter 2 pm, he an­nounced the dis­as­ter, say­ing, “I have de­clared a lo­cal dis­as­ter here in Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, where chil­dren are now ma­rooned.”

As flood lev­els rose, com­mu­ni­ty vol­un­teers and res­cue teams were dis­patched to as­sist res­i­dents and school­child­ren from Pe­nal Rock Pres­by­ter­ian School and Pe­nal Rock RC School who were strand­ed by the del­uge.

With reg­u­lar ve­hi­cles un­able to pass through sub­merged roads, the cor­po­ra­tion de­ployed dump trucks and hi­abs to help trans­port chil­dren as they climbed up lad­ders to sit in the trays of the trucks.

Some trucks stalled in the floods and the ma­jor­i­ty of mo­torists parked up to wait for the wa­ter to re­cede.

With the South Oropouche Drainage Basin strug­gling to han­dle the im­mense vol­ume of rain­wa­ter, Ma­haraj point­ed to the need for an ur­gent re­assess­ment of drainage sys­tems in the rapid­ly ex­pand­ing Pe­nal/Debe re­gion.

“Pe­nal and Debe is a quick­ly ex­pand­ing area, and there needs to be a re­assess­ment of wa­ter­cours­es and drainage,” he said, rec­om­mend­ing re­ten­tion ponds and quick­er wa­ter­course clean­ing to help mit­i­gate fu­ture flood risks.

Some res­i­dents who were ma­rooned in their homes vent­ed.

“This is the fourth flood, and no­body give us a dol­lar to buy any­thing to clean out,” a woman shout­ed to me­dia cam­eras.

School teacher Sheila Lo­gan al­so ex­pressed frus­tra­tion.

“School has been dis­missed since the morn­ing, and we are still here, wait­ing for trans­port to get out of this area,” she said.

By late af­ter­noon, the army was de­ployed to pro­vide fur­ther sup­port, bring­ing home res­i­dents and stu­dents still cut off by flood­wa­ters.

While the ef­forts pro­vid­ed crit­i­cal as­sis­tance, many res­i­dents ex­pressed frus­tra­tion as they con­tin­ued wait­ing for help to reach their neigh­bour­hoods.

“Since half past eight, I’ve been wait­ing to go home, and I still can’t reach,” said Rasheed Han­iff of Sou Sou Lands.

Su­per­mar­ket work­er Hope De­o­dath de­scribed the dis­rup­tion to dai­ly life, not­ing, “There’s flood in every cor­ner; it’s af­fect­ing cus­tomers, and we’re stuck at the mo­ment.”

In many ar­eas, taps ran dry as ris­ing flood­wa­ters seeped in­to prop­er­ties, leav­ing those in­side with no wa­ter to drink but floods all around.

“It’s stress, re­al stress—the whole place is flood­ed out,” said Tara Singh.

By 4 pm, emer­gency crews were dis­patched to oth­er af­fect­ed zones, in­clud­ing Pa­pourie Road, where flood­wa­ters had left stu­dents from Bar­rack­pore East and Bar­rack­pore West Sec­ondary schools strand­ed.

Res­cue teams nav­i­gat­ed dif­fi­cult road con­di­tions to bring the pupils to safe­ty, trav­el­ling through flood­wa­ters that had over­tak­en road­ways and made many parts of the re­gion in­ac­ces­si­ble.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to reach Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly to dis­cuss whether any spe­cial arrange­ments would be made for schools af­fect­ed by the flood­ing but re­ceived no re­sponse.