Flooded Roads Raise Alarm During Hurricane Season  

Well, we’re just about a month into the hurricane season and already, Mother Nature is making her presence felt. In northern Belize, heavy rains have caused significant flooding, turning major roads into rivers and leaving some communities temporarily cut off. The Ministry of Infrastructure Development was quick to respond, sending out teams to assess the damage and carry out urgent repairs. But with months of stormy weather still ahead, the big question now is: how prepared are we for what’s to come? And what’s being done to protect our highways, especially in flood-prone areas? We spoke with Chief Engineer Evondale Moody to get some answers.

 

Evondale Moody, Chief Engineer, MIDH

“To be honest, the ministry has began its preparation for every hurricane season from the beginning of January. So I meet with the technical staff of the ministry, we asses where we are in terms of the road infrastructure. We assess what we need to put in place in terms of materials, culverts and to be on standby incase we have emergencies we have to respond to. So we have bene on top of things as best as we can as a ministry. In respect to the works up north, we had some minor damages in San Jose where the road shoulders were eroded in two sections. However because of preparation our team has mobilized and completed about seventy percent of those works. We deployed early last week to repair the shoulders undermined by the flood waters. We also installed new erosion protection measures to prevent that incident from occurring again. It is difficult to say or task these events will happen. We don’t know where the excess rainfall will occur, however from what I have seen the concentration of rainfall over Orange Walk was very intense. So that led to the inundation of those sections of the road. However the road held up.”