Swamped - Rain brings pain to Clarendon communities
Published:Wednesday | June 8, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer
A week into the hurricane season, rains have already brought misery to the perennially flood-prone areas of Clarendon, bringing back memories of anguish and loss.
A decade after a fierce weather system scoured the parish, leaving untold devastation in its wake and former Prime Minister Edward Seaga (then opposition leader) calling for a new drainage plan for the community, houses continue to be engulfed by water, leaving residents overwhelmed.
Alfredo Thomas dejectedly stared into space yesterday, seemingly oblivious to the small crowd which had descended on a section of the Toll Gate main road in southwest Clarendon.
But that was as far he could go.
Thomas, whose house was one of many surrounded by a sea of brown water, was jolted out of his reverie when neighbours and friends prompted him to speak.
"You see the conditions mi have to live under? And I don't know where to turn," he said, before turning away, agitated.
The community in which he has lived for many years had taken an early battering from the winds and rains over the past four days.
As it has been for more than a decade, the venom of the weather system has brought dejection, incurred by fresh loss and grief to the people of Osborne Store and Toll Gate.
With the Atlantic hurricane season so young, the residents loudly wonder what will become of them this time around.
A section of the roof of a house was blown away, even as rising waters flooded many others.
A fierce gust of wind that residents described as a "mini hurricane" has been blamed for the loss of the rooftop on Monday night.
Water climbing many feet high engulfed houses along the Toll Gate main road, forcing occupants to beat a hasty retreat from their homes.
The New Apostolic Church of God in the neighbourhood also suffered. The muddy water was just as unmerciful to the sanctuary as it was to the people of the communities.
Unable to traverse the rising waters to enter the house they share, Oliver Smith and Gregory Miller spent much of yesterday relating their ordeal to anyone who would listen.
Miller told The Gleaner that they could only hope that some of their belongings were spared, as they had attempted to secure them before scooting out.
"I am 40 years old, and as far as I know, this thing has been happening for more than 40 years and nothing has been done," he lamented.
The Gleaner was told that the occupants of other homes had moved away when the weather system got mean, while others were staying with friends.
Such a level of flooding is not alien to Toll Gate, Osborne Store and neighbouring communities,
After rains ravaged the community in 2001, Seaga said on a tour that a new drainage plan was needed for the entire area to prevent future flooding of this magnitude.
A decade later, nothing has been done, even as the councillor for the Toll Gate division, Joel Williams, and residents continue to echo Seaga's sentiment.
Williams said the area was in need of a much larger culvert, through which the water gushing from Denbigh, Crawle, Four Paths and Clarendon Gardens, among other communities, could escape.
He said the existing culvert buckles under the pressure of the rains, causing flooding in Toll Gate.
Williams, who had twice contested the South West Clarendon seat for the Jamaica Labour Party, said the people have been living in the affected communities for the past 10 to 15 years under the Jamalco Resettlement Programme.