SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Sev­er­al ar­eas in South Trinidad ex­pe­ri­enced flash flood­ing on Mon­day fol­low­ing heavy show­ers, leav­ing many peo­ple strand­ed and forc­ing res­i­dents to clean slush, mud and wa­ter from their prop­er­ties.

In Union Hall, flood­wa­ters ren­dered parts of the road­way im­pass­able. This caused traf­fic de­lays, forced some dri­vers to aban­don stalled ve­hi­cles, and left oth­ers seek­ing al­ter­na­tive routes.

In San Fer­nan­do, res­i­dents at Palmiste Bend, Co­conut Dri­ve, were ma­rooned in their homes af­ter the Cipero Riv­er over­flowed its banks, push­ing wa­ter on­to the road­way and in­to their yards.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area, 73-year-old res­i­dent Ish­mael Mo­hammed and his daugh­ter, clad in gar­den boots, were busy wash­ing slush from un­der their home.

He ex­plained that the flood­wa­ters rose about three feet un­der his house but said the sit­u­a­tion was less se­vere than in pre­vi­ous years.

“The wa­ter came up so fast, we had to move out the van, car­ry it on the road.”

Mo­hammed be­lieved heavy rains cou­pled with high tide caused the floods.

“I born and grow here. I don’t think they could do any­thing re­al­ly be­cause if you raise the riv­er high­er, the out­let from here to throw out the wa­ter will back in.”

In­stead, Mo­hammed said he would pray to Al­lah to stop the heavy rain­fall and high tide.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, me­chan­ic Kyle Goop­tar, said the riv­er broke its bank af­ter just ten min­utes of rain, push­ing wa­ter in­to his prop­er­ty.

“We had to move every­thing. We have a garage here, is parts, is all kind of things we have to move. If we don’t move it, it’s out of we pock­et we will have to look for mon­ey and buy back peo­ple thing,” Goop­tar said.

The 25-year-old ex­plained that flood­ing has af­fect­ed the area for as long as he could re­mem­ber.

In past years, he said they lost cars, car parts, and ap­pli­ances to flood­wa­ters but were nev­er com­pen­sat­ed.

He be­lieves prop­er drainage could help mit­i­gate the flood­ing, how­ev­er, he ex­pressed frus­tra­tion with the au­thor­i­ties’ re­sponse.

“When is time for elec­tion, you see this one and that one. You see the most. (But, af­ter elec­tions) no­body don’t come here. I lost about three ve­hi­cles two or three years ago when we got the big flood. I nev­er got com­pen­sa­tion. I lost fridge, stove,” he said.

There were al­so re­ports of flash flood­ing in Cha­co­nia Av­enue, Pleas­antville, La Ro­main, River­side Dri­ve, and Scots Road.

Mean­while, lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives con­firmed that de­spite the flood­wa­ters there were no re­ports of in­jury or sig­nif­i­cant dam­age.

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen said her min­istry will col­lab­o­rate with Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John to re­store breach­es along the Cipero Riv­er in an ef­fort to pre­vent fur­ther flood­ing in the com­mu­ni­ties.