Akash Sama­roo

As the trac­tor we were on splut­tered through Ross Trace, St He­le­na, we first saw Sil­van Roop­nar­ine with his head in his hands look­ing at the dam­age done to his home.

“My house got de­stroyed dur­ing the 2018 floods, so I moved every­thing in the garage and I start­ed to live there. Now with this flood, every­thing I put in the garage gone now,” Roop­nar­ine told Guardian Me­dia with tears in his eyes.

Roop­nar­ine, like many res­i­dents in St He­le­na, is still trau­ma­tised by what tran­spired in 2018 and while they say yes­ter­day’s in­un­da­tion was noth­ing like the dis­as­ter of three years ago, some did not take any chances.

Sel­wyn and his fam­i­ly be­long to that group. As our trac­tor dri­ver swung in­to Con­stan­tine Trace, he and his fam­i­ly were leav­ing.

“We’re go­ing by fam­i­ly to wait this out,” he said.

“Wa­ter start­ed ris­ing about 2 o’clock this morn­ing at high tide and then it kept ris­ing and ris­ing. We got flood­ed out in 2018 and even though that was worse, it’s like the same old, same old here.”

It’s an at­ti­tude that many have adopt­ed to get by in St He­le­na. Liv­ing so close to the Ca­roni Riv­er has made them ac­cus­tomed to days like yes­ter­day. But it does not mean it makes their suf­fer­ing any eas­i­er.

The Den­nis fam­i­ly has been liv­ing in the area for over 20 years. Daisy Den­nis said while peo­ple may say they are liv­ing in a flood-prone area, it still hurts when it hap­pens.

Two neighbors use their boats to survey the damage caused by floodwaters along Santa Monica Trace in St Helena yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

“When the rain was falling I was pray­ing and ask­ing God not to let this hap­pen again, but it’s a sad thing and don’t mind you don’t have a big home, it still sad. We ex­pect this some­times, so when I build­ing an­oth­er house I build­ing a high house,” Den­nis de­clared, sob­bing in her liv­ing room with wa­ter up to her an­kles.

Some weren’t too stressed out though. Those who had dinghies were ly­ing back in them lis­ten­ing to the flow of wa­ter. Oth­ers sim­ply sat drink­ing their tea in the gallery look­ing at the wa­ter around them. It was in San­ta Mon­i­ca dri­ve that we saw a group of young men stand­ing in waist-high wa­ter cut­ting up ed­does.

“Broff boy, we are go­ing to make a broff, KFC ain’t open yet, no­body ain’t bring any­thing for us and we’re hun­gry!”

That re­silience and de­sire to see the bright side spread to an area along the Ca­roni South Bank Road, where a shop was al­so flood­ed, but this time with peo­ple pur­chas­ing drinks.

One man shout­ed at us, “We drink­ing, cook­ing and lim­ing, if bet­ter can’t be done then con­tin­ue do­ing the worse.”

A man and his son bathes in  floodwater along the St Helena Road, yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Break­ing from tra­di­tion, many didn’t seem to blame any­one for this. Not the coun­cil­lor, Min­is­ter of Works or even the Prime Min­is­ter. They just saw it as an­oth­er day near the mighty Ca­roni Riv­er. They did say that maybe the trib­u­taries could be more reg­u­lar­ly cleaned but it seemed as if they had no ex­pec­ta­tion that it would be done.

St He­le­na coun­cil­lor Richard Ram­per­sad told Guardian Me­dia that time and again, he has been ad­vo­cat­ing for con­crete box drains in the area, lament­ing that there are still dirt drains in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“Box drain?! Box drain can’t fix this!” a man on a bi­cy­cle told us when we sug­gest­ed the idea.

He con­tin­ued laugh­ing while cy­cling through the mud­dy wa­ters.