BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – ALMOST all areas in St. Kitts were affected by the passage of Tropical Storm Rafael, and certain parts of Frigate Bay had more than their full share.
Warnings of Tropical Storm Rafael were issued by NEMA on Friday (Oct. 12), and while some people had put safety measures in place they could not have prevented the heavy flow of water that poured down upon St. Kitts for approximately four days.
One of the areas that was water-logged was the eastern portion of Frigate Bay, which contains the Salt Pond that overflowed onto the Strip and the thoroughfare.
In an interview with Rudolph Morton, Managing Director of the Frigate Bay Development Corporation, he said they had quite a number of problems with the salt pond and the rain.
“The rain we had over the weekend caused all of the ponds to overflow; at the Strip, there were areas where vehicular traffic was impossible because of the depth of the water,” he said.
The Salt Pond flowed over into the roads, the playing field and also onto the golf course.
Morton said that they began working on the problem immediately creating several trenches in the area to help drain the water into the sea.
“We have opened up a trench below Buddies and Inons Bar, and the water is flowing nicely out there; the pond overflowed, but most of the water is gone now,” he said.
Morton said they have a 36 inch diameter pipe that takes water out to the ocean from the pond and vice versa, where fishes will also enter into the pond via the pipe.
“It’s the constant rain, the rough seas, and it was impossible to get things under control. We started immediately, on Saturday (Oct. 13) but the rain was constant - but we started planning to see if we could get the system under control,” he said.
He said in terms of other damages, he had learnt that the Royal St. Kitts Hotel had some 30 rooms affected by water due to the heavy rains.
Of the golf course, he said the grass there which is a special type of grass received damage and will have to be replaced.
He said that the bars on the strip only seemed to have had minimal damage.
On Sunday, (Oct. 14) a trench was dug from the pond onto the Strip then to the ocean.
“We did a trench to relieve the water on the golf course, road, and pond. The water is going out now, because of the trench.
“We would like the public to understand what we’re doing on the Strip, because you wouldn’t be able to drive right through now; it will be temporary … just to stop any problems that can occur with vehicles in terms of slipping and getting stuck,” he said.
Morton said they were asking people to be understanding as the trench on the Strip may be inconvenient for some.
“One must be a little inconvenient at times in order to make things convenient. That’s why we have the mouth of the trench there, so we can keep the channel open and get the levels of the pond down to an acceptable level. This will also ensure that if we should get that quantity of rain again it will take a much longer time to create the problems we recently faced.”
