Derek Achong

Res­i­dents of the La Hor­quet­ta and Green­vale Park com­mu­ni­ties in Ari­ma were thrown in­to high alert due to flash flood­ing caused by heavy rain­fall yes­ter­day. 

Some res­i­dents, still emo­tion­al­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly scared by dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing which struck the com­mu­ni­ties in late 2018, took to so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter­noon as their wa­ter lev­els cov­er­ing their streets be­gun to rise. 

While by the time a news team from Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the ar­eas, the wa­ter lev­el had re­ced­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly, its short-lived pres­ence had al­ready been felt in the com­mu­ni­ty with large num­bers of res­i­dents be­ing forced to re­moved wa­ter from their homes.

“Last time they said they would fix the drainage, this time is the same thing,” one res­i­dent said, as point­ed to a hole in a wall at the side of her house which her fam­i­ly made to help drain flood-wa­ter that had col­lect­ed in­side. 

The La Hor­quet­ta res­i­dent com­plained that while her area had ex­pe­ri­enced flood­ing some­what com­pa­ra­ble to Green­vale Park they were ne­glect­ed in terms of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive works and com­pen­sa­tion. 

An­oth­er res­i­dent point­ed out that even though she con­struct­ed steps in and out of her sin­gle-sto­ry home in an at­tempt to re­strict wa­ter flow in­to her house, her home was still com­plete­ly flood­ed. 

The woman, who has a tod­dler, said she would have to make arrange­ments to tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cate as her en­tire house had to now be sani­tised. 

While the news team from Guardian Me­dia was on the scene, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date for La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro Fos­ter Cum­mings was seen tour­ing the area with his team. 

While some res­i­dents were re­cep­tive of Cum­mings’ vis­it, oth­ers were not as they walked away and re­turned to their in­di­vid­ual clean­ing du­ties. 

“Is on­ly a set of promis­es. Vote me. Vote me,” an irate woman said be­fore re­turn­ing to her prop­er­ty. 

In a brief in­ter­view, Cum­mings said that re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion staff were on their way to ren­der as­sis­tance and that he would meet with the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture to­mor­row to dis­cuss pos­si­ble long term so­lu­tions to the is­sue. 

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), un­der which both com­mu­ni­ties fall, de­nied re­ports that res­i­dents were be­ing evac­u­at­ed. 

“We un­der­stand the ner­vous­ness you may ex­pe­ri­ence once there is heavy rain­fall but we wish to ad­vise that the mit­i­ga­tion sys­tems which were in­stalled in your com­mu­ni­ty are func­tion­ing as they should,” the re­lease said. 

It stat­ed that the berm was pre­vent­ing wa­ter from sur­round­ing wa­ter­cours­es and the com­mu­ni­ty and that pumps were re­mov­ing wa­ter from the re­ten­tion ponds. 

“Wa­ter that would have gath­ered on some streets in Green­vale Park is quick­ly re­ced­ing and pos­es no threat to life or prop­er­ty,” it said. 

It al­so added that its emer­gency re­sponse team had been dis­patched to as­sist res­i­dents of La Hor­quet­ta.