Gracie Rock prepares for rising waters
For the hundreds of people lined up on the Western Highway, their biggest problem of the day was how to get from point A to point B with a broken bridge in between. But residents of villages in low lying areas along a dozen rivers in the southern half of the country had more serious concerns, concerns that grew with every inch of rising water. News 5’s Ann-Marie Williams got back in her boots and waded through the village of Gracie Rock, where the Sibun River had already spilled over its banks.
Laurel Young
“This flood is very, very scary because it comes up so sudden.”
Ann-Marie Williams, Reporting
The floodwaters have reached Gracie Rock Village on the Western Highway and almost the entire landmass is underwater, leaving the over two hundred residents in a quandary.
Laurel Young, who owns a small provision shop, and has lived in the village for almost three decades says the rapid rise of the river is frightening.
Laurel Young
“It usually give you a little warning. You see the water coming up, so you know that you can make preparation in the day so that if it comes up in the night you already prepared for it.”
Young is ensuring she makes the necessary preparation to secure the supplies that she sells to the villagers.
Laurel Young
“I am preparing all my groceries up high, then I have my little grocery store that I have to prepare all the things them up high too so they cannot get wet and also my little creatures them and prepare myself too.”
It’s not only the rising floodwaters of this rural community that residents are concerned with. They say had it been and actual hurricane they would have been trapped, trapped in their homes that will soon be inundated by water simply because they don’t even have a community centre to seek shelter.
Laurel Young
“They promise us through NEMO that they will take us out from here to take us to Belmopan. And that’s very impossible because the roads is not good enough if water should come like this.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“Like now. Had it been a hurricane, you would have been trapped here.”
Laurel Young
“That’s right, I would have been trapped here, so we need a hurricane shelter. At least not the shelter, it’s just the top of the centre needs to be fixed. It’s just that that needs to be renovated. So it’s very impossible for all the villagers to get up from here and go to Belmopan. In the condition like this, we will definitely die, look at the bridge, the bridge is collapsing and it’s just from the flood.”
Although we’re not experiencing a hurricane at this time, Young says the centre would have been an important place of refuge for most villagers who live in very low houses.
Laurel Young
“It’s a critically condition Gracie Rock people are in right now. All the villagers are crying out for a community centre top. No hurricane shelter is behind Gracie Rock right now.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“You say that you’ve been promised one for a long time.”
Laurel Young
“We’ve been promised. Only live on promise, we living on promise land for quite some time now.”
Ann-Marie Williams for News 5.
This evening it was reported that the waters were still rising.
