She said when she first moved in, she lost a washing machine and a water pump to floodwaters. I don’t know what I’ll do if we end up like Greenvale, I don’t think I can even afford to think about starting over.” “If it had come any higher, it was coming inside the house. Ramsey-Johnson, who lives closer to the river than Rogers, said the water in her yard rose much higher. When I got it and I came here, people told me to brace for flood, but someone had told me if I gave back the house for any reason, I wouldn’t get another, so I stuck it out,” she said. “I didn’t have a choice, I had waited seven years for a call. Ramsey-Johnson said initially she didn’t want a house in Coconut Grove because she knew it was built on reclaimed swamp land. “What is going to happen to us the day we get flooding like Greenvale? Everyone in this development will drown,” she said. Two streets away, Sarah Ramsey-Johnson expressed similar fears. “It is cause for concern because if the rain continued to fall, we would have gotten water in our homes.” She said it was the worst flooding that community had experienced and it has brought on fears that Coconut Grove can face a disaster just like Greenvale. For about three days we couldn’t come out, the entire development was covered in water because the river is just about 300 feet from the development so as soon as it flows, we get flood.” “My son said it’s like we are living in a muddy lake. She has been living in the development for nine years. Rogers said this was the third time she has experienced major flooding in the last year. “We couldn’t come out in that water, it was very unsanitary because you could see people’s cesspit tank covers floating, so there was raw sewerage in that water,” she said. Families who did not want to brave the murky floodwaters to get out were marooned in their homes. The houses in which they live are built on short stilts, about three feet high, which meant that the water was close to entering their homes.

Resident Sharon Rogers said she and her family were trapped as the water rose quickly and reached close to three feet high in her yard. Six of the 58 units remain vacant up to this day. There are 58 houses in the development, which was started in 2004 by the People’s National Movement (PNM) under the Urban Development Corporation of T&T (Udecott). Rainfall only adds to the problem and street flooding has become a regular occurrence. As a result, the drains in and around the houses are filled to capacity for most of the day.

The Sunday Guardian visited the development earlier this week, where residents were trapped in their homes for three days-October 19, 20 and 21-when most major rivers in the country burst their banks due to excessive rainfall.īut the residents in Coconut Grove said the flooding was not only caused by heavy rainfall-whenever the ocean tide is high, the Ortoire River, which borders the development to the west, floods the drains. Now homeowners live in fear that the development in which they live could turn into a disaster zone if adverse weather conditions intensify. Like many other Housing Development Corporation (HDC) projects, Mayaro’s Coconut Grove Development faces its share of woes, including complaints of constant flooding due to improper drainage.

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