A preg­nant woman and her two-year-old daugh­ter are among flood-af­fect­ed fam­i­lies from Su­chit Trace, Pe­nal, who have been sleep­ing un­der tents and in their ve­hi­cles since Thurs­day night.

Res­i­dents in sev­er­al ar­eas of south Trinidad, in­clud­ing Pe­nal, Debe, Wood­land, Bar­rack­pore, Fyz­abad and San Fran­cique, were ma­rooned in their homes be­cause of floods which had not re­ced­ed up to late yes­ter­day. Many of them com­plained that they had re­ceived no help from gov­ern­ment agen­cies

“This is the fourth time in a year we get flood out and we get no help. Is three days we un­der­wa­ter and is like no­body care,” said Mi­tra Sam­path who has been sleep­ing un­der with his wife and their two chil­dren, ages ten and 18.

Fa­ree­da Mooral­ly, 56, said she and her fam­i­ly had to leave their home be­cause of the ris­ing flood wa­ters.

“We have been in this tent in the road since Thurs­day evening. We eat­ing and sleep­ing here be­cause we can­not get in­to our homes. This is not the first time we get flood out and we nev­er get no kind of com­pen­sa­tion,” she said.

Mooral­ly’s four grand­chil­dren had to be sent to stay at a rel­a­tive’s home un­til the floods sub­side.

Mala Latch­man, who is six months preg­nant, along with her hus­band, their two-year-old daugh­ter and her broth­er in law, have been sleep­ing in a maxi taxi in front their home which is un­der three to four feet of wa­ter. They have been de­pend­ing on neigh­bours, rel­a­tives and kind-heart­ed strangers for food.

Kei­th Khan, who has been liv­ing in the area for more than 50 years, blames the floods on the fact that a riv­er which flows near his home has nev­er been dredged.

With no food in their homes to feed their five chil­dren aged be­twwn on and 14, Mala Ram­dath-Po­lo and her hus­band Andy Po­lo, drove through the floods Wood­land and had to be res­cued af­ter their ve­hi­cle stalled.

“It was scary. The wa­ter was push­ing the car,” said Ram­dath-Po­lo.

A res­i­dent used a trac­tor to pull their ve­hi­cle out of the floods.

Tara Jaglal, of Wood­land, de­scribed the fright­en­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing to flee in the dark on Fri­day night when the floods be­gan gush­ing in­to their home.

“We had to put the chil­dren on our backs and walk out. I just fed up of this,” she said.

Wood­land farmer Ghan­sham Ganesh, 67, walked three miles through the floods try­ing to se­cure his cat­tle. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, two of his calves drowned.

Per­son­nel from the Fire Ser­vice and the Pe­nal Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion’s dis­as­ter man­age­ment team were called in to help some res­i­dents of Gopie Branch Trace. At around 3 pm, the De­fence Force ar­rived to as­sist the af­fect­ed ar­eas.

Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Dr Al­lan Sam­my said there had been more than 340 re­ports of flood­ed homes and 800 bags of sand were dis­trib­uted. He said the floods rose overnight and spread to ar­eas which had not been pre­vi­ous­ly af­fect­ed.

“This is worse than the last one in terms of sever­i­ty and ex­tent,” he said.

Min­is­ter tours af­fect­ed ar­eas

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan vis­it­ed flood-af­fect­ed ar­eas yes­ter­day and promised to raise the banks of the rivers in an at­tempt to al­le­vi­ate the prob­lem.

“Clear­ly what you find hap­pen­ing is ab­nor­mal rain­fall and in the low ly­ing ar­eas, you have the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of wa­ter. Most of the wa­ter­cours­es would have been stressed again,” said Sinanan.

He said last year work had been done on the wa­ter­cours­es and most of the rivers in the area would have been dredged.

He said: “We have reached a new norm with the weath­er pat­tern and what we would have tak­en for grant­ed as nor­mal weath­er in the past, clear­ly we get a lot more rain in the rainy sea­son. What is strange is that the rain is falling in dif­fer­ent ar­eas and the down­pour is very heavy in a short space of time and that is what is giv­ing us the chal­lenge with the ca­pac­i­ty is­sue.”

Sinanan said while there were plans to do more de-silt­ing of the rivers to try to con­tain the wa­ter, it is al­most im­pos­si­ble to stop flood­ing in the low ly­ing ar­eas.

“This is al­most like a basin where the wa­ter in the past would have been al­lowed to breach and if you look at some of the old­er hous­es, they would have been built on stilts. The new hous­es are now built flat on the ground and that will be a chal­lenge in an area like this,” he said.

The min­is­ter said con­struc­tion of com­mer­cial build­ings on agri­cul­ture land was al­so con­tribut­ing to the flood­ing.

“I spoke to most of the res­i­dents and they kind of un­der­stand that yes we have some work to do but most of the prob­lems have been man­made and then you have the whole the fact of the ab­nor­mal weath­er con­di­tion glob­al warm­ing and so on.”