Al­though the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) is try­ing to as­sure home­own­ers that re­me­di­al and mit­i­ga­tion works in its Green­vale, La Hor­quet­ta, de­vel­op­ment are al­most com­plete, res­i­dents say they are not con­vinced the de­vel­op­ment is ready for an­oth­er rainy sea­son.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day, home­own­er Wendy Mod­este said with the start of the pas­sage of an In­ter-Trop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ) yes­ter­day, af­ter a mere two hours of mod­er­ate rain­fall, the streets of Green­vale be­gan fill­ing with wa­ter.

“The rain start­ed about 9 o’clock and last­ed on and off for about two hours and when I looked out­side, there was wa­ter in the streets al­ready,” Mod­este said.

She said by 11.20 am the wa­ter had sub­sided but the fear of a re­peat of last Oc­to­ber’s dis­as­trous flood­ing has just start­ed to gath­er again.

“I re­al­ly don’t know how to de­scribe it, this is peo­ple’s lives we are talk­ing about not just homes. I live in a two-storey house so I feel like I could still save my­self and my fam­i­ly if the wa­ter comes high an­oth­er time…I doubt it will reach up in­to the sec­ond storey, it is re­al­ly the peo­ple in flat hous­es that I am wor­ried about.”

Mod­este said while re­pairs were done to her home, the work was shod­dy and rushed.

She said she brought her com­plaints to the at­ten­tion of the HDC of­fi­cial who vis­it­ed her af­ter the re­pairs were com­plet­ed but she was told noth­ing was wrong with the work.

In a re­lease on Sat­ur­day, HDC said the ma­jor­i­ty of mit­i­ga­tion and in­fra­struc­ture work that was pro­posed for the com­mu­ni­ty has been com­plet­ed.

“These works in­clude the rais­ing of the con­tain­ment berm to ful­ly sur­round the com­mu­ni­ty, the rais­ing of the berm and cul­vert, cross­ing the east­ern ac­cess road, the rais­ing of road­ways sur­round­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and the con­struc­tion of a road to con­nect La Hor­quet­ta South and Green­vale Park, which will be used an al­ter­na­tive ex­it route for res­i­dents. Work is cur­rent­ly un­der­way on the con­struc­tion and in­stal­la­tion of an au­to­mat­ed flood pump­ing sta­tion to en­sure in­creased and more re­li­able pump­ing ca­pac­i­ty at the de­ten­tion ponds,” the cor­po­ra­tion said.

The re­lease said 435 hous­es were dam­aged in the flood last Oc­to­ber and so far, re­pairs were done on 375 of those.

“These works in­clud­ed re-tiling of the in­te­ri­or ar­eas, in­stal­la­tion of new cup­boards, doors and kitchen fur­nish­ings and the re­pairs to elec­tri­cal out­lets. To date, re­pairs to 375 homes have been com­plet­ed and hand­ed over to res­i­dents with the re­main­ing units re­quir­ing mi­nor work, such as the in­stal­la­tion of cup­boards. These are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed short­ly.”