Dionne Rose, Staff Reporter
Motorists carefully drive across the Yallahs ford in St. Thomas yesterday. The ford, part of the main corridor connecting the Corporate Area to St. Thomas, was damaged by continuous weekend rainfall caused by a surface trough and tropical wave. -photos by Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer
Near normal weather conditions are expected to return to the rain-soaked island today following the lifting of a flash-flood warning yesterday by the Meteorological Service.
According to the Met Service, the combination of weather features which produced prolonged heavy rainfall over mainly eastern and central parishes for the past few days has drifted westward from Jamaica.
Meanwhile, Ronald Jackson, acting director of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM), said the parish of St. Thomas was hit the hardest at the weekend.
"We were contemplating possible evacuation for areas in Seaforth and Cedar Valley, but we feared having to go that route," he told The Gleaner.
"The impact was heaviest in St. Thomas, more so in terms of infrastructure damage, and a number of the incidents were (also) in sections of Portland," he added.
On the weekend, a section of the Yallahs ford in St. Thomas was washed away. The Passion and Mosquito gullies overflowed their banks and inundated the main road leading to Seaforth, preventing vehicular traffic.
There were also reports that the main road from Easington to Llandewey was rendered impassable by flood waters and erosion of the Murray Gully.
Families flooded out
Yesterday, Jackson said eight families in the Bull Bay area were flooded out because of a nearby blocked drain. The family was assisted by the National Works Agency (NWA), which cleared the drain.
He said the NWA also did some shoring up of the banks of the Bull Park River in eastern St. Andrew.
Over in Portland, landslides slowed traffic to a crawl.
"The works agency has also reported to that site and is carrying out clearance of that landslide as we speak," Jackson said.
Residents help direct motorists across the Yallahsford in St. Thomas yesterday.
