Tonight, dozens of residents in western Belize are grappling with flood waters, blocked streets and inundated yards, brought on by Tropical Storm Sara's persistent rains this weekend. The storm began producing rain over the country on Friday and by Sunday when it made landfall, the dams were overflowing, the rivers had broken its banks, and dry lands were covered in flood waters.

The storm brought several inches of rainfall, particularly in the Cayo District, and impacted several communities along the Mopan and Macal Rivers.

The rising waters were so intense that many businesses and market vendors were forced to evacuate as well as several residents. Prime Minister John Briceno led a delegation of officials this morning for a flyover of the affected areas. Love News met up with him in San Ignacio Town where he spoke on his observations of the various areas.




John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize:

"We started off early this morning by taking a fly over. We went all the way to the Mollejon and seeing how the water is overflowing. Wherever you go you just see lots of water flowing and all of that water is coming into the Cayo district onto the Belize district and onto the sea. We saw also here by the Santander farms lots of probably few hundred acres of sugar cane under water. A lot of small farmers have been losing their crops and at Mile 7 and those other Lagracia, all those small villages we have a lot of farmers that grow vegetables, al to of that I sunder water. A lot of damage to infrastructure, to the main roads, roads into the village streets have been damaged, water systems in some instances. So there is a lot of work ahead of us but we just ask people to be out on the lookout. Thankfully it's not raining because once it stops raining it will give us time for the water to flow so the Ministry of Infrastructure Development has been working closely with the area representatives and opening up bigger drains and putting bigger culverts that can manage the amount of water that we have. So it's a lot of loss that's affecting not only the government but even individual people. Here in Bullet Tree we went in some of the homes."

Several other communities in the west were also affected like Calla Creek, San Jose Succotz, Bullet Tree Falls, and San Antonio Village. Briceno also spoke about the efforts to assist the affected residents and the government's efforts to mitigate future instances of flooding in the district.
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