Study hopes to ease impact of Belize River flooding

Over the past several months, a flood mapping exercise was carried out as part of a Caribbean Disaster Mitigation Project. The assessment, which attempts to simulate how the Belize River runs and its impact on the communities from San Ignacio to Roaring Creek during floods, was presented to the villages’ chairpersons, representatives of water resource management and the power plant in Mollejon as well as other concerned parties today in Belize City.

Carlos Fuller, Coordinator, Project

“We have noticed that San Ignacio goes under some very quick floods and similarly in Roaring Creek the river suddenly rises. So we want to see if we can reproduce that on a computer, we could then get the tools to warn people ahead of time when we see a certain amount of rainfall occurring in the pine ridge to be able to tell them you have so many hours to move out. And being forewarned they can get out of the way and at least save lives if not property.”

Fuller says the model will enable them to do event-based storm rainfall runoff simulations from any location along the river.

The assessment was done in conjunction with the Organization of American States which is the executing agency for C.D.M.P. The model used was an adaptation of one used by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.