RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Two roofs were blown off homes as res­i­dents from the low-ly­ing com­mu­ni­ties of Pe­nal, Bar­rack­pore, and Wood­land con­tin­ued to brace for more rain­fall, even as teams worked to man­age flood­ing from the South Oropouche Drainage Basin.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Gow­tam Ma­haraj said that while wa­ter lev­els had dropped on main roads, some homes ex­pe­ri­enced flood­ing and dam­age.

"All main roads are clear. There was a cou­ple of cen­time­tres of wa­ter in Rock Road, but that can be con­sid­ered clear be­cause all ve­hi­cles are pass­able," Ma­haraj said. "We do have some cas­es where hous­es have flood­ed out. We are at­tend­ing to them."

He said one home in Gol­con­da lost its roof and suf­fered struc­tur­al dam­age. Ma­haraj ex­plained that the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit (DMU) had been on site to as­sess the sit­u­a­tion and pro­vide sup­port.

“Over the past two days, we have had about three to five hous­es with a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion where a roof has blown off or a tree has fall­en,” he added.

Sand­bags are be­ing dis­trib­uted to re­duce the im­pact of flood­ing. Ma­haraj ex­plained that teams are us­ing sand­bags to cre­ate em­bank­ments in strate­gic ar­eas.

“We are us­ing the sand­bags to cre­ate lit­tle em­bank­ments here… which is con­tain­ing wa­ter in some parts where we do not want it to go.”

He said the DMU has al­so start­ed an in­for­ma­tion cam­paign fo­cused on ed­u­cat­ing res­i­dents about tides and riv­er lev­els to help them pre­pare.

“We are plan­ning in a more in­tel­li­gent way… us­ing the stream lev­els and tide in­for­ma­tion to help res­i­dents un­der­stand the be­hav­iour of the chan­nel,” Ma­haraj said.

He not­ed that shel­ters were on stand­by and high ve­hi­cles were ready for emer­gency trans­port, es­pe­cial­ly for stu­dents sit­ting ex­ams and vul­ner­a­ble in­di­vid­u­als.

Mean­while in Wood­land, pres­i­dent of the Wood­land Flood Ac­tion Com­mit­tee Kevin Hard­uar said res­i­dents re­main con­cerned about flood­wa­ters en­ter­ing the com­mu­ni­ty due to river­bank fail­ure. He said shel­ters have been ac­ti­vat­ed, but most peo­ple are choos­ing to stay.

He said wa­ter is over­flow­ing from the river­bank and has start­ed to back up near the flood gauge. He not­ed that with the low tide, the wa­ter has been flow­ing out.

Pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Group, Ed­ward Mood­ie, said about 220 feet of river­bank has been miss­ing for 20 months and re­pairs have failed.

“The en­gi­neer­ing method is wrong,” Mood­ie said. “Wa­ter is just emp­ty­ing from the new cut chan­nel… in­to the Wood­land com­mu­ni­ty.”

Mood­ie re­port­ed that the pumps were work­ing, but un­der pres­sure.

“They have two pumps there. One is on the left, one is on the right… the pump is pulling it back out while wa­ter is com­ing down and tak­ing its nor­mal route,” he ex­plained. “The pump is ac­tu­al­ly re­duc­ing the amount of wa­ter that is back­ing up in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

Mood­ie called for a re­view of how river­banks are con­struct­ed. He said many res­i­dents have tak­en pro­tec­tive mea­sures, but the long-term emo­tion­al toll is mount­ing.

“Peo­ple are re­al­ly messed up men­tal­ly be­cause they have had enough of this flood­ing over the years,” Mood­ie said.

He said while flood­wa­ters are be­ing man­aged for now, of­fi­cials and res­i­dents re­main on alert as the fore­cast sug­gests more rain­fall in the com­ing days.