RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Fol­low­ing three con­sec­u­tive days of rain­fall, flood­wa­ters in Rock Road, Pe­nal drained out rapid­ly yes­ter­day, of­fer­ing a brief re­prieve for res­i­dents.

But across the broad­er South Oropouche Drainage Basin, in­clud­ing Wood­land, res­i­dents re­mained on high alert as more rain loomed in the fore­cast.

Pres­i­dent of the Wood­land Flood Ac­tion Com­mit­tee Kevin Hard­uar said res­i­dents were anx­ious.

“Wa­ter con­tin­ues to over­flow the river­bank and is back­ing up near the flood gauge. With low tide, it’s flow­ing out, but that could change,” he said.

Hard­uar ad­mit­ted that floods did not rise in the Wood­land basin, ex­cept for some wa­ter cross­ing the main road. How­ev­er, he said this was be­cause of low tide, not­ing that res­i­dents were brac­ing for ris­ing floods when the tides turn.

Mean­while, Ed­ward Mood­ie, pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Group, said that wa­ter had crossed in­to the plains from a 220-foot sec­tion of river­bank which has been erod­ed for near­ly two years with­out suc­cess­ful re­pairs. “The en­gi­neer­ing method is flawed,” Mood­ie said. “Wa­ter from the new­ly cut chan­nel is emp­ty­ing di­rect­ly in­to Wood­land.”

Al­though two pumps were op­er­a­tional, Mood­ie warned they were un­der sig­nif­i­cant strain.

Mood­ie al­so called for a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of river­bank con­struc­tion meth­ods and flood con­trol strate­gies, warn­ing of the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll on res­i­dents. “Peo­ple are men­tal­ly ex­haust­ed. Af­ter years of re­peat­ed flood­ing, it’s tak­ing a re­al emo­tion­al toll.” He called for a meet­ing with Works Min­is­ter Jearlen John and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen.

Chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Gow­tam Ma­haraj, told Guardian Me­dia that there was proof that the flood mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies ex­e­cut­ed by Min­is­ter Ameen had al­ready borne fruit.

He said while wa­ter lev­els have re­ced­ed from most main roads, some house­holds were still grap­pling with flood­ing and storm-re­lat­ed dam­age.

“All main roads are clear. There was a cou­ple of cen­time­tres of wa­ter along Rock Road, but it’s now ful­ly pass­able,” Ma­haraj said. “How­ev­er, we still have iso­lat­ed cas­es where hous­es were flood­ed. We’re at­tend­ing to those im­me­di­ate­ly.”

He said sand­bags were be­ing de­ployed to strate­gic lo­ca­tions.

In ad­di­tion to phys­i­cal de­fences, the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit has launched an in­for­ma­tion cam­paign to ed­u­cate res­i­dents on how tide and stream lev­els af­fect flood risks. “

We are plan­ning in a more in­tel­li­gent way—us­ing re­al-time da­ta to help com­mu­ni­ties un­der­stand chan­nel be­hav­iour,” Ma­haraj said. He con­firmed that emer­gency shel­ters were still on stand­by, and high-clear­ance ve­hi­cles were avail­able to trans­port vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple, in­clud­ing stu­dents sit­ting ex­ams.