Three house­holds were evac­u­at­ed from ris­ing flood­wa­ters in Wood­land yes­ter­day, af­ter the New Cut Chan­nel burst its banks, spilling wa­ter in­to the com­mu­ni­ty.

Re­cap­ping the im­pact of Wednes­day and Thurs­day’s ad­verse weath­er, Pe­nal Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PDRC) chair­man Dr Allen Sam­my told Guardian Me­dia their dis­as­ter man­age­ment unit (DMU) re­spond­ed.

“We have four homes, three of which we had to move the peo­ple out and take them to fam­i­lies so we can’t do an as­sess­ment (of dam­age). In the oth­er one, we had to give a mat­tress and two ham­pers. We had giv­en 500 (sand) bags out to­day (yes­ter­day), yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) we gave out 750 bags,” he said.

Sam­my said the PDRC’s Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit would be on stand­by through yes­ter­day evening to re­spond to fur­ther floods he an­tic­i­pat­ed would come.

“It is high tide and the sit­u­a­tion is grim in that we think more wa­ter is com­ing from the Princes Town area, from rain­falls em­a­nat­ing there as well as from the South­ern Range via the Curo­ma­ta Riv­er,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Wood­land yes­ter­day to view the breached river­bank. The loud surge of over­flow­ing wa­ter could be heard from an es­ti­mat­ed 800 feet away. Though too far away to see, the breach was con­firmed via aer­i­al drone footage cap­tured by Guardian Me­dia cam­era­man Ivan Toolsie.

In the near­by com­mu­ni­ty at Ra­hamat Trace, res­i­dents were sit­ting out­side their flood­ed homes.

“My son woke me up about 6 o’clock this morn­ing when he got up to ready for school and when I got up, right around the house, in­side the liv­ing room was cov­ered in wa­ter,” Tim­my See­gob­in said.

“My wife sit down in­side there right now and she cry­ing be­cause I mean, how many times you’d go through some­thing like this? Every time the rain fall, you have to be wor­ried.”

He said this was not the first time they had been flood­ed out for the year, with the most re­cent be­ing around a month ago. He said they did not an­tic­i­pate the floods, de­spite of­fi­cial warn­ings, be­cause the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port’s Drainage Di­vi­sion did work on the river­bank dur­ing the week.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, An­ganie Ho­sein, said they’ve un­for­tu­nate­ly got­ten ac­cus­tomed to the oc­cur­rence. Out­side her flat house is an ad­join­ing two-storey wood­en house. She ex­plained this was built so the fam­i­ly could have some­where to stay for the week or so it typ­i­cal­ly takes for the flood­wa­ters to re­cede.

Mean­while, South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Group pres­i­dent Ed­ward Mood­ie yes­ter­day ques­tioned where was the pump which was promised to Wood­land.

“We want the pump in Wood­land. What this would do, in ar­eas where we have breach­es along the South Oropouche riv­er, that pump would kick in and keep emp­ty­ing back and you would not have the rise that you are ex­pect­ing,” he said.

The pres­i­dent of the Wood­land Flood Group al­so echoed Mood­ie’s call.