RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Flood­wa­ters were ris­ing rapid­ly in parts of Wood­land on Mon­day night af­ter the South Oropouche Riv­er burst its banks, send­ing mil­lions of gal­lons of wa­ter in­to the com­mu­ni­ty.

Res­i­dents were try­ing to stack valu­ables on high­er ground as the floods con­tin­ued to back up fur­ther in­land as far as Debe.

At 8.30 pm, MP for Oropouche West Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is­sued an alert on Face­book say­ing: "Riv­er breaks its bank at Tul­sa Trace; Pe­nal braces for flood­ing."

He ex­plained: "The pump is not in op­er­a­tion and all op­er­a­tors have left. The wa­ter is flow­ing up­stream in the Black Riv­er. This means that flood­ing is to be ex­pect­ed in sev­er­al ar­eas of Oropouche West, in­clud­ing Gopie Trace, Su­chit Trace, Ra­hamut Trace etc and en­vi­rons. Please pre­pare as much as pos­si­ble."

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia hours af­ter, Wood­land Flood Ac­tion Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent Adesh Singh said he had mo­bilised a team to as­sist res­i­dents.

He said they al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ed the back­up of floods and the breach of the riv­er.

"Three mem­bers of the Wood­land Flood Ac­tion team vis­it­ed the Trinidad Point Flood­gates, where we found five of the 14 gates shut," Singh re­vealed.

"The oth­er nine flood­gates are not func­tion­al and are per­ma­nent­ly closed," he added.

But South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Group pres­i­dent Ed­ward Mood­ie told Guardian Me­dia that the sit­u­a­tion was ex­ac­er­bat­ed be­cause of a 50-foot breach in the river­bank.

"I shud­der to think what this area will be like in the morn­ing," Mood­ie said.

Both the Bhag­ma­nia Riv­er and the South Oropouche Riv­er drain Bar­rack­pore, Pe­nal, Wood­land, Her­mitage and Palmiste, but Mood­ie said when they in­ves­ti­gat­ed the back­up of floods at the Trinidad Point Flood­gates, they re­alised the Min­istry of Works Drainage Di­vi­sion did not have per­son­nel on-site to open the gates at low tide.

"If this was done, there could have been some runoff and the floods would not be as dev­as­tat­ing as now," he ar­gued.

Mood­ie al­so said on­ly one pump was set up at the Tul­sa Trace pic­nic site but when they checked, that pump was not func­tion­al in chan­nelling out the floods.

"The Min­is­ter had said they will bring in two pumps, but on­ly one was set up. When we en­quired as to why the pump was not work­ing, we were told there was some elec­tri­cal mal­func­tion but when we went on the site there was elec­tric­i­ty at the site. This means work­ers are not do­ing their job," he added.

This sto­ry will be up­dat­ed as more in­for­ma­tion comes to hand.