Home News Swift response needed during flooding – Leguan residents …say improved defence structure...
Amid high tides last week which affected a large section of Guyana’s coast, residents of Leguan in the Essequibo River also faced the brunt of flooding.
One resident, Somnauth Devar, reached out to Guyana Times and told of a number of complaints about their condition after the inundation. He shared that while assistance was brought to the coastland, his community waited for many days before any relief efforts.
Last weekend, he said the island was hit by massive flooding along with other sections of the coastland. After severe overtopping for a few days, officials of the Civil Defence Commission would have visited Leguan and Wakenaam on Thursday, where assessments were undertaken.
“We get the flood here and all. They come to see what damage we get Thursday but nobody said anything about the defence and how to fix it for the next time. The West Coast wasn’t the only affected place. We yard had high high water and we had to wait with no assistance. We needed somewhere to go until this water went away,” the resident related.
He added that while sea defence works are ongoing in some parts of the island, there is much more to be done. In fact, he insisted that the current structure would be inadequate in a few years to support the magnitude of overtopping in the coming years.
“Every year, what we seeing is that the tide coming bigger and bigger. So you can’t build back the same structure and expect that the people here would be safe. The seawall got to be higher to protect we. They just rebuilding the same thing that we had before…When the people from the Ministry come round the last time, people tell them about it”.
According to other residents, persons residing in close proximity to the river were more severely affected than others.
On September 28, residents in several coastal villages were under water from the unprecedented high tides, which lasted until Thursday. According to authorities, the communities in Regions Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara), Four (Demerara-Mahaica), Five (Mahaica-Berbice) and Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) were affected by the high water.
Stakeholders from the various agencies met on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the damage from the floods and steps to be taken to prevent or alleviate similar impacts from another bout of high tides expected on October 26, 2019.
Updating the media during the National Emergence Operation Centre meeting, Senior Response Officer, Capt Salim October, revealed that across the coastline, a total distance of approximately 148 kilometres were impacted by the floods, including some 65 communities across the various regions with Three and Five facing the severity of the floods.
According to October, the impacts in Region Five were exacerbated by breached sea defence.
Nevertheless, he noted that assessments thus far reveal that approximately 400 households were flooded, causing items to be damaged. He added too that affected persons have also suffered the loss of cash crops as well as livestock including poultry and cattle, especially in Region Five.
“Salt water accumulation did not only affect homes but the impacts were also to pasture lands that small- and large-scale ruminants are required to graze. There were noted sea defence structure breaches and overtopping of sea and river defences, which would’ve caused heightened levels of erosion. As well as noted, damage to agriculture inputs and by extension, the cascading effect of that is for loss of usual livelihood, and at this point potential livelihood – particularly, compromised rice crops from salt water accumulation,” he was quoted as saying.
