by Sascha Wil­son

Overnight tor­ren­tial show­ers caused flood­wa­ters to rise in sev­er­al ar­eas in Pe­nal and Bar­rack­pore yes­ter­day leav­ing roads im­pass­able and res­i­dents ma­rooned in their homes.

One of the hard­est-hit ar­eas was along the Pe­nal Rock Road where flood­wa­ters cov­ered a mile of road­way from the Pe­nal Rock (Kubairs­ingh) Hin­du Pri­ma­ry School.

The floods al­so spilt in­to side roads such as Moolchan Trace, Good­man Trace, Nages­sar Trace, and Gowrie Sankar Trace.

Res­i­dents said this was not one of the worst floods they have ex­pe­ri­enced and there were no re­ports of loss to live­stock, agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts, or prop­er­ty.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al busi­ness­es had to re­main closed while scores of peo­ple were un­able to go to work.

The Pe­nal Rock Road Pub­lic Ceme­tery was al­so flood­ed. While the wa­ter be­gan to ris­ing around 5 am, some res­i­dents were af­fect­ed long be­fore that oc­curred. Moolchan Trace res­i­dent Sam­daye Moti­lal, 76, who lives alone said she spent a rest­less night.

“Last night I was sleep­ing and this rain come down and the way this rain start to fall I feel like this house go break down. I feel like the par­ti­tion and thing shak­ing and the way the wa­ter falling in the gal­vanise my chest start to pain be­cause I have this pace­mak­er in my chest.”

She was afraid that she would not sur­vive the night.

“I on­ly say­ing God for­give me, God for­give me, take care of me. I pray­ing to God all the time.”

She had to take her heart med­ica­tion.

“More the rain falling hard is more the chest hurt­ing. I see tonight is the last night for me. I was so scared.”

When the sun came up, she re­alised that her home was sur­round­ed by flood­wa­ter.

“This was not so big. Re­al big the flood does come.”

Wip­ing the tears from her face, Moti­lal said all she want­ed was some food to eat.

Her next-door neigh­bour Cur­tis Kaliper­sad who lives in a down­stairs apart­ment said he woke up to around 5 am and the yard was al­ready flood­ed.

For­tu­nate­ly, he man­aged to put his be­long­ings on a height be­fore the wa­ter en­tered his apart­ment.

“Luck­i­ly we were able to lift every­thing high­er and noth­ing was dam­aged and is just to clean up now.”

He called on the au­thor­i­ties to prop­er­ly clean the rivers and drains to mit­i­gate the floods. Bar­ber Anil Boodoo said he could not open his busi­ness lo­cat­ed along the Pe­nal Rock Road.

“The prob­lem re­al­ly is it have a drain from Moolchan Trace go­ing back to La­bos An­nex and that drain clog and if it is that drain clean it will be able to flow a lit­tle bet­ter. We might not avoid the flood but again the vol­ume of wa­ter might be less be­cause it have an ac­cess to go.”

Dr Al­lan Sam­my, chair­man of the Pe­nal Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion who took the me­dia on a tour of the area, an­tic­i­pat­ed more floods in oth­er ar­eas.

Speak­ing with re­porters near the Hin­du school, Sam­my said, “The floods are em­a­nat­ing from the hills, the South­ern Range, which is on­ly a mile away from where we are. This is the area that is cus­tom­ar­i­ly flood­ed first and all the junc­tions be­tween here and what is called the six-mile mark along the Pe­nal Rock Road...I an­tic­i­pate that there is go­ing to be greater flood­ing a lit­tle lat­er be­cause when the tides are high then it is go­ing to bank up again as we say, so there is go­ing to be more flood­ing.”

He said the Pe­nal Rock Road and its drainage fell un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Min­istry of Works, but the mi­nor wa­ter­cours­es were the cor­po­ra­tion’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“There are 99 wa­ter­cours­es in Pe­nal/Debe which we are re­spon­si­ble for and we clean that re­li­gious­ly so this is not un­usu­al. I know the Min­istry of Works has tried but be­cause it is not a com­pre­hen­sive pro­gramme so then it has not been done prop­er­ly. Now by prop­er­ly I don’t mean what they clean is not cleaned prop­er­ly but I mean it has to be done along the en­tire course of the riv­er.”

One of the prob­lems, he said, was that the de­ci­sion-mak­ing re­gard­ing the clean­ing of drains was not made by the Min­istry’s Pe­nal/Debe di­vi­sion.

“I know they have been try­ing to de­cen­tralise the de­ci­sion mak­ing back to Pe­nal/Debe but so far it has been fruit­less.”

He said the cor­po­ra­tion’s Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit was on alert since Mon­day night, their dingy op­er­a­tors were on stand­by and their shel­ters were al­so on stand­by.

He said with­in the last two months the cor­po­ra­tion has giv­en out 6,500 sand­bags.