Yesterday, 7News took you to 3 of the 4 villages in the Orange Walk District which are in the vicinity of the Albion Islands, which is very flood prone.
We showed you the rising water level due to the floods caused by the Rio Hondo. NEMO continues to watch these 4 villages of Santa Cruz, San Antonio, Douglas and San Roman, and today, the Regional Director of NEMO in the north told us that as of this afternoon, they found that the water level has stopped rising.
Via telephone, he explained that they will remain active to help the commuters of these villages, until the roadways are cleared:
Elodio Aragon Sr. - Regional Director, NEMO Orange Walk & Corozal
"This morning I spoke to the chairpersons of each village and all of them are agreeing that the river - it hasn't completely stop, but since yesterday it went up one inch. They believe that by tomorrow it supposed to stop rising. Once it stops rising then we have to continue to maintain the operations we have out there which are the boats and everything because the other phase will be for the river to go down."
"Usually for it to go down it would take about a week before it normalizes and people then can begin to use the roads to travel. Essentially the boats are needed because even if the river stops raising it will remain more or less at that same level going down by inches until it normalizes and I presume that would take a week."
"At this point I was just getting figures; sums of how much have been spent there. Whatever has been spent does not compare any at all with the amount of money that has been loss through agriculture, for example; sugarcane, rice, beans, corn and all these things would have been lost. That is the substantial losses that we have suffered."
"In relation to household, it has been very little. In relation to having boats out there, it has been minimal because we have used 3 BDF boats which we only supply fuel to. We have only employ 2 local boats which costs us $200 per day plus fuel."
"The operation that we did in transferring people from one place to another is minimal. The biggest costs - not only for NEMO, but to the country will be agriculture damages that have been suffered."
According to Elodio Aragon Sr, they expect that once the river returns to normal, the main roads into these villages will become usable once again.
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