Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Flash flood­ing in vary­ing parts of Moru­ga left mo­torists tem­porar­i­ly ma­rooned and a few home­own­ers frus­trat­ed af­ter heavy and per­sis­tent rain­fall yes­ter­day.

The rain be­gan on Tues­day night while thun­der­show­ers start­ed at around 4 am.

In St Mary’s Vil­lage, near Saun­der’s Trace, dri­vers were grid­locked when they at­tempt­ed to pro­ceed fur­ther in­to the vil­lage as wa­ter flood­ed the street. Peo­ple head­ing in the di­rec­tion of Princes Town were al­so de­layed.

Guardian Me­dia spoke with one Moru­ga farmer, Ryan Lopez, who said he woke up to wa­ter in­side his home at around 6 am.

Lopez was asleep with his com­mon-law wife, three-year-old daugh­ter and six-year-old son un­aware that floods had en­tered their home and de­stroyed their pos­ses­sions.

As he jumped off his bed, he said four feet of wa­ter was at his feet. He stored squash­es in a cor­ner of his home which were al­so cov­ered with wa­ter.

“I didn’t even know it was flood­ing. I get up this morn­ing and I see well, we lie down in wa­ter. The dou­ble mat­tress, the bot­tom piece of the mat­tress soak out and the deep freeze spoil,” he said.

Lopez said poor in­fra­struc­ture was re­spon­si­ble for the flood­ing which made his morn­ing a bad one.

“The morn­ing done start bad al­ready! It have a drain across the road where the cylin­ders small and they was to come and fix it but they nev­er fix it,” he lament­ed.

How­ev­er, the elect­ed coun­cil­lor for Moru­ga Joseph Lo­rant, who won his seat for a third con­sec­u­tive term on Mon­day, said un­til he’s sworn in, there is lit­tle he could do.

“At the present time we are elect­ed per­sons so we would just have to re­ly on our con­nec­tions to make it a re­al­i­ty,” he said.

Nev­er­the­less, he said he re­ferred Lopez’s con­cerns to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties and stat­ed that the elect­ed chair­man of the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PTRC) is ready to as­sist at a mo­ment’s no­tice. Though the coun­cil­lor said Lopez was not the on­ly one af­fect­ed.

“I would have re­ceived in­fo con­cern­ing Poui Trace be­ing flood­ed, al­so part of La Ruf­fin, the road­way was flood­ed as well and in ad­di­tion to that sev­er­al hous­es would have been flood­ed al­so along the Moru­ga Road,” he said.

Lo­rant said he in­tend­ed to vis­it Bar­rck­pore to as­sess the mag­ni­tude of the im­pact and sur­vey the area to de­ter­mine the num­ber of hous­es af­fect­ed by floods.

He added that he was in con­tact with the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion’s Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit. As for ef­forts to mit­i­gate flood­ing in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture, the coun­cil­lor said he had been clean­ing drains in the lead-up to Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions (LGE).

“Even dur­ing the cam­paign sea­son, I was clean­ing wa­ter­ways to as­sist in what­ev­er ways pos­si­ble to high­light and rec­ti­fy some of the sit­u­a­tions that was iden­ti­fied to me,” he said.

He said he in­tends to ramp up these ef­forts af­ter he is of­fi­cial­ly re­in­stat­ed as coun­cil­lor.