Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

In the qui­et hours of yes­ter­day morn­ing, res­i­dents across low-ly­ing com­mu­ni­ties in Pe­nal were met with a fa­mil­iar, un­in­vit­ed force. 

Flood­wa­ters made their way in­to homes af­ter ad­verse weath­er brought heavy winds and a steady down­pour. 

By dawn, hous­es along Seu­radge Trace stood like strand­ed boats in the brown pool. Sati Beepath told Guardian Me­dia, how yet again, her home had be­come in­un­dat­ed. 

“Wa­ter it does just be com­ing through, all in­side my shed there, I even try to block it. If you walk in the back you will see how all my shed have wa­ter and that it seep­ing through now. If the wa­ter come any high­er it go­ing and come in­side for sure.” 

Beepath was among the scores from the low-ly­ing com­mu­ni­ty who was not spared the ef­fects of the on­go­ing ad­verse weath­er. 

Ac­cord­ing to Beepath, like oth­ers in the area, yes­ter­day’s scene was not an un­fa­mil­iar one. 

“For the last six or sev­en years it is the same thing, near­ly every year here does flood.” 

The years of in­va­sive flood­wa­ters have now left her and her neigh­bours de­vis­ing ways they be­lieve can put an end to their peren­ni­al woes. 

“We al­ways have prob­lems with this wa­ter, so if they make a reser­voir in the area or some­where around so that all this wa­ter can col­lect in and hold the wa­ter.” 

An­oth­er res­i­dent sug­gest­ed that the area’s road­way be el­e­vat­ed. 

“I feel they need to go up a few more brick heights with this box drain and al­so raise the road,” the woman stat­ed. 

A short dis­tance away, work­ers at the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion were fill­ing sand­bags to be dis­trib­uted. Mem­bers of the T&T Reg­i­ment were al­so po­si­tioned at the cor­po­ra­tion’s build­ing. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that an es­ti­mat­ed 1,000 sand­bags had been dis­trib­uted to res­i­dents by mid­day. 

Sand­bags were al­so be­ing used by work­ers to con­struct a bar­ri­er to avoid a ma­jor wa­ter course from spilling over in Tul­sa Trace. 

“The work­ers here are us­ing the sand­bags to cre­ate a unique em­bank­ment. As tem­po­rary as it may be, it is ef­fec­tive as it is pre­vent­ing wa­ter from the Coo­ra Chan­nel from en­ter­ing the Black­wa­ter Chan­nel. The Black­wa­ter Chan­nel is what the vil­lage is fed by. So the in­tent of the ef­fort is to re­duce the amount of wa­ter go­ing in­to the Black­wa­ter Chan­nel,” ex­plained chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Gow­tam Ma­haraj. 

Ma­haraj con­firmed that the South Oropouche Chan­nel had al­so spilt over and was a cause for con­cern. 

Ma­haraj not­ed that while the im­pact of ad­verse weath­er was not as bad as on pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions, the cor­po­ra­tion re­mained vig­i­lant. 

“We did see some ben­e­fits to the clean­ing works done, how­ev­er, we are stymied a bit in ar­eas where there are en­croach­ment in pri­vate ar­eas in par­tic­u­lar. So we make the call for all to co­op­er­ate with us to help clear those ar­eas. Our dis­as­ter man­age­ment unit is re­spond­ing to calls. The army is with us and we have a good re­la­tion­ship with NGOs to as­sist.” 

The cor­po­ra­tion chair­man urged res­i­dents to re­main vig­i­lant and re­port any in­stances of flood­ing or emer­gen­cies.