Fearing flooding, residents sleepless in St Helena

For hundreds of residents in low-lying areas near the Caroni River basin, Saturday will be a day to hose down the slush, spray disinfectant and remove items destroyed by the water which began to seep into their homes early on Friday.

Torrential, persistent showers across the entire country on Thursday morning dumped significant volumes of rain, which overspilled the the country's largest river and several of its tributaries.

Luckily, water began to recede with two low tides on Friday and the rain gods heard the cries of the residents, many of whom were devastated by the horrific floods of 2018, which destroyed all of their household items.

Some residents had to be temporarily evacuated from their homes and others transported on high vans to get home. Many villagers parked their cars on the main road to prevent flood damage.

Family pets and livestock were also secured on higher ground, while stray pothounds waded in the dirty water.

Other parts of the country such as Sangre Grande, Las Lomas, Manuel Congo, Debe, Penal, Woodland, Barrackpore and South Oropouche were also inundated by floods, as they have been whenever there is torrential rain, which also forced the closure of some vaccination sites.

The flooding, said to be the result of housing development, slash-and-burn farming, illegal quarrying, unapproved development, failure to replant trees and degrading of the hills in Maraval and Diego Martin, also left a deluge of debris in its wake earlier this week.

The Meteorological Service issued a warning that many watercourses in Trinidad were on the brink of breaching their banks as of midnight on Thursday, and later extended the warning until 4 pm on Saturday.

In a release, it said up to 3.5 inches of rain fell in some parts of the country between Wednesday and Thursday and warned that with high tide, flooding was possible in low-lying areas.

Mala Ramkissoon, one of the long-time residents of El Carmen Village, just east of St Helena junction, said she and her family were awake from just after midnight, when they began to notice water rising around their one-storey home.

Ramkissoon said her family was alerted shortly after midnight that the river had overspilled its banks and water was coming from east of El Carmen towards their home.

"We had to wake all night because we did not know what to expect. We wake whole night monitoring the water to see what was happening.

"Then the water start. When we got up about 5.30 this morning, water started to come all through the garage and the back, so we started to raise everything like the washing machine, fridge. We still monitoring to see how high it will come," she said during an interview on Friday morning.

"We had an experience worse than this in 2018. Oh my God, that one was the worst. That one, we had to actually had to run from the house and leave everything. We end up losing every single thing. As God is my witness, I wouldn't like to go through that again.

"Because of that that is why we had to wake all night. The fright from that time till now it will never leave. So every time we have a flood we will always feel this way."

Her neighbour Ramesh Lalsingh said he also had a sleepless night, peering through his windows as the water levels rose.

Like the Ramkissoons, he took precautionary measures to secure his appliances and mounted them on top of several clay blocks at the back of his home.

They both believe a regular drainage programme to clean the surrounding rivers, canals and ravines could prevent future floods in the district.

Farmer Harry Boodram says he is prepared to lose his entire crop of patchoi, chadon beni and melongene growing at the back of his home in El Carmen. He said he could not apply for any compensation, as he did not have a farmer's permit.

In 2018, he lost everything and was left on the roof of his home for hours before help came. He doesn't know if he can rebuild again.

Councillors from the Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation Richard Rampersad, Samuel Sankar and Derek La Guerre, who represent communities affected by the flood, were on hand to help, but there was little they could do until the flood subsided.

They said with the assistance of the Ministry of Works and Transport, measures were taken to clear watercourses, but the volume of rain was just too much.

By late evening, as the water went down, traffic snaked its way from Washington junction in Caroni to Kelly Village, with many people slowing to look at the still-flooded fields.