Harbour View residents in fear - Say flooding in unfinished gully threatening their homes | �Ӱ��԰�

Harbour View residents in fear - Say flooding in unfinished gully threatening their homes

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September 27, 2019

Photo

Sherine Newman shows the section of her house that the gully is undermining. She fears that continued rainfall will eventually cause serious damage to her property and endanger lives.

Sydoney Mitchell, a resident of Bayshore in Harbour View, walks through a gully which residents say is threatening their homes.

Whenever floodwaters run through the gully, residents say it eats away at the foundations of their homes.

As rain drenched sections of the island on Wednesday, Harbour Drive resident Sherine Newman said she was extremely fearful that her home was going to collapse after floodwaters created a gully that had begun to tear away a section of her foundation.

Pointing to the breakaway under her house, she blamed the government for the flooding issue that has been plaguing the Harbour View community for several years.

"My house will crumble. Every time rain falls, I have to worry about my child. Every time I hear a sound, I keep thinking it's the back of my wall, and that's it for my house. This is no way for anyone to live. It is rainy season and I can't imagine what is going to happen when October kicks in. We are going to have to take legal action because we are decent people and we deserve more," she said.

The heavy rainfall that has been impacting the island for the past few days has caused flooding in several parishes.

"Wednesday's rain just further impacted what was a disasterous situation to begin with. There was a makeshift gully that was constructed a few years ago at the back of our homes with boulders that they placed on top of a hill, and anyone with a brain would know that they would eventually roll down into this gully area and cause a blockage," Newman said.

Negative effects

Newman said she is not the only home owner who has been feeling the negative effects of the torrential showers and stated that several of her neighbours have also lost their walls in the process as the rising floodwaters crept into their yards.

"Right now, you can see completely under my home from the back and that is not safe in any way at all. Every year, members of the government body come and they check and estimate what it would cost and they come for their photo op and that's it. We are tired of the mouth service. We are tax-paying citizens and we deserve to be treated with respect. My family purchased this house from in the 1970s and to know it is being destroyed like this," she said.

"This flooding affects everyone in Jamaica because people use this road to go to and from the airport and St Thomas," she said.