VI under flash flood watch; homes & cars flooded, ghuts down!
The severe rains have caused thus far in early assessment, damages to cars, homes, along with massive land slides and flooding in low lying areas of Road Town, East End, Purcell Estate and Sea Cows Bay on the main island of Tortola and Valley, Virgin Gorda.
The sister island of Jost van Dyke experienced some flooding and land slide and Anegada continues to face heavy rain fall but no major damages.
Cars and home in a mess, ghuts down
Ghuts are down in every Village on Tortola while Road Town has been hit the hardest with flooding everywhere especially, in many of the commercial areas around the Flow Building, Scatliffe Alley, the James Walter Francis Drive and in the area of Delta Petroleum at Pasea Estate.
Damages to cars and homes from severe flooding could be in the hundreds of thousands according to a government official speaking to our newsroom on condition of anonymity.
However, the officer cautioned that it is too early to make any serious assessment.
BVI Electricity Corporation has held its own as most, if not all areas, throughout the VI remain with power up to press time. However, roads on Virgin Gorda and Tortola in many areas are a challenge to traverse.
In many areas on Tortola, falling rocks, debris, water from ghuts and visibility have affected driving and safety on the roads.
In addition, major parking lots on Wickhams Cay in Road Town have been covered with water, and many parked cars in the part of running ghuts have been affected.
It's really bad following the rains
It remains unclear if anyone was evacuated and had to seek Shelter, however, many parked cars experienced flooding as social media has been circulating photos and videos of the situation in many communities on Tortola and Virgin Gorda.
According to official weather reports, a tropical wave is causing very unstable weather across the VI and already some 25 to 50 MM of rain has fallen.
The BVI Disaster Management Chief Ms Sharleen S. DaBreo could not be reached as of publication time.
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20 Responses to “VI under flash flood watch; homes & cars flooded, ghuts down!”
Typically, drainage systems are not designed to handle any size rain events,i.e., 2, 10, 25, 50, 100, 500......etc. The community decides what risk it wants to assume. Nonetheless, the drainage system should be designed, constructed and maintained to safely handled low, frequent recurrence interval rain events, i.e., 2, 5, 10, 25......etc. Rain stopped, clean up started, and damages assessed........etc an assessment should be conducted on drainage system performance. Specifuically, did the flooding occur due to size of the rain event or due to other factors, i.e., maintenance, system size........etc. Stay safe and heed the warnings.