Broken bridges, stalled vehicles, flooded homes, damaged roads and fallen trees.
That was the grim scene which confronted Government officials yesterday as they toured northern parishes to assess the devastation from Sunday’s torrential rainfall, which also claimed a life.
Led by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport and Works Santia Bradshaw, the team included Minister of Home Affairs Wilfred Abrahams; Member of Parliament (MP) for St Peter Colin Jordan; MP for St Andrew Dr Romel Springer; St Lucy MP Peter Phillips, and officers from Department of Emergency Management (DEM).
They noted that the nine inches of rainfall which wreaked havoc especially on the northern parishes was an “extraordinary situation”.
Severe damage
They spent more than five hours moving from parish to parish viewing the severe damage, with Bradshaw even on occasion directing for calls to be made on the spot to engineers, crews from her ministry and Barbados Water Authority, in order to get some of the situations dealt with as a matter of urgency.
Speaking to the media, she pointed out that the rains had not only impacted households across the various communities, “but also impacted the road infrastructure, many of which is in motion in terms of ongoing roadworks”.
She noted that a number of roads across the Scotland District where mains replacements were ongoing had been “dug up”.
“Rains like this basically set back the roadworks programme, but it has also, in a sense, eaten out the roadway, and you are going to see a lot of different holes, which we are working feverishly now to be able to close up. A lot of the contractors have been asked to go out and to do the back filling to make sure that we are able to close a number of these holes.
“We are seeing that across a number of the projects we are visiting this morning, and I suspect as we continue along the day, you are going to start to see debris, and you are going to see a lot of the marl having been washed out from these roadworks. St Lucy and certainly in the St Peter parishes, we are doing the roadworks, and we are mindful that as those works continue, in terms of the mains replacements, that the heavy rains are going to compound the issues in terms of getting these roads replaced.”
She urged Barbadians to “pay attention to where these challenges are” as she assured that “we will have the contractors and the MTW teams at the depots going out to clear, first of all, the main arteries, and then we will come into the communities as we get the requests through the DEM and through the depots to be able to clear a number of those areas”.
Engineering designs
She added: “As it relates to the flooding in a number of areas, we have taken on board the concerns of a number of the residents across the country, and for the first time we have seven flood engineering designs actually being done, with a view to . . . in the early part of the year, having a number of those locations actually fully constructed in terms of the wells and the drainage designs.
“This is significant because these are long-standing issues that have crossed both political parties, because when it comes to these types of issues, politics cannot play a part in addressing these problems. We have made
sure that we have outsourced the works from other areas . . . . We are trying to make sure that our flood engineering designs are done with a view to being able to start construction.”
While overlooking the Salt Pond in Speightstown, St Peter, Jordan dismissed circulating videos which suggested that water had overflowed and flooded the town.
‘Canal did its job’
“I really have to tell you that I am pleased that this canal did exactly what it was supposed to do. There was a video circulating saying that Speightstown has flooded . . . but what the video showed was the canal doing exactly what the canal was constructed to do.
“The canal was constructed to take a one in 50-year event, and yesterday’s deluge might have been a one in 50, I’m not sure, but the canal handled the water well. Even when the tide was getting higher and the sea wasn’t taking the water where we would have wanted it to take the water, but it never flooded the traditional areas that are flooded.
“So that in Round The Town, there was no flooding. In Gills Terrace, there was no flooding. Based on the volume of water that we had yesterday, both of those areas would have flooded significantly. My fear is that if we had not as a Government built this canal about five or six years ago, that we may have had loss of life in the Gills Terrace or Round The Town area.”
He spoke of significant road damage at Moore Hill, Bakersville and especially Centipede Alley, where rushing waters washed away a lot of the roadworks, making it impassible for vehicular traffic.
“Major work needs to be done. That will take some surveying and some significant technical work. But even before the technical work is done, something will need to happen to make sure that the top of the marl surface can hold a decent shower,” Jordan added.
In Maycocks Terrace, St Lucy, Phillips also reported on flooded homes and damage to roads which were already under repair.
A crew from the Barbados Fire Service was on the scene throughout Sunday evening and again yesterday pumping off volumes of water which had created a pond in the middle of the road.
Phillips admitted that it was about the third time a home in the area had been flooded.
“Now, this situation has been exacerbated by the fact that a number of wells were promised to be sunk in this area, about five wells, and that would greatly assist in easing the situation here because literally every time there are clouds in the sky, these residents become extremely uneasy,” he said.
Over at Bawdens Bridge in St Andrew, Springer lauded the residents who he said sped into action and cleared debris which included several fallen trees when water topped over the bridge.
While he lamented the damage caused to the bridge and road, he said it would still give engineers the opportunity to redesign the area in order to make it better able to withstand such volumes of water. (MB)
