The heavy rains don't usually come until June but a late season cold front pushing past Belize caused a torrential downpour last night. It rained for hours here in the city - and when residents woke up, it was to a city underwater. Here's how it looked this morning:
Cecil Jenkins, Sanitation Administrative Supervisor
"Like you say we could never predict when the rains will be falling, so I guess yesterday or last night when this rain came it was like a surprise to the public, but we never expect this."
Monica Bodden reporting
It was tough going this morning in the city, rubber boots - fashionable ones - were called for Or high stepping across the puddles while the police station looked like it needed a coast guard rescue.
Workers needed a hand to hold unto and some intersections looked like river mouths. We didn't see many stalled out, even very low cars made it through, but some roads - like King Street were definitely only fit for SUV's. While newly cemented streets turned into swimming pools.
Still, kids had to find their way to school, some through knee high water, most of them going in at around 9:00 when the high water had rolled off.
Here on cemetery road, the city's sanitation department was trying to clear out drains.
Cecil Jenkins, Sanitation Administrative Supervisor
"Presently Jules, as you can see the area is flooded and what we try do as Sanitation Department of the Belize City Council is to try to clean out the manhole for allowing the water to flow steadily to alleviate this flooding on Pound Yard Bridge area."
Jules Vasquez
"Why does this area always flood so badly?"
Cecil Jenkins, Sanitation Administrative Supervisor
"Jules this area has been very much prone to flooding; this has always been happening for years and its something the council is trying its best to try to alleviate. If you notice they have just fix the canal area with proper drainage system but we still constantly have to come back and just plough out the holes to make sure the flow of the water flow in the drains. The drainage is properly okay, they are dug out and it's just the edge of the drain that usually has that built up with sand and debris and garbage that block up the little holes from making the water flow."
"If you were out here earlier this morning the water was about atleast a foot to two feet high and now the trucks and the buses and pedestrian could walk freely now because now the council is out and also we are trying our best to make this water flow off as quickly as possible."
By 10:00 am - the sun was beating and the floodwaters had mostly rolled off.
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