As residents grapple with floodwaters that transformed parts of Belmopan into rivers over the weekend, Mayor Pablo Cawich is rejecting claims that blocked drains are to blame. Speaking out tonight, Cawich says the flooding was driven by an extraordinary surge of water flowing from neighboring Armenia Village, overwhelming the capital city’s drainage network. According to the mayor, the scale of the flooding was unlike anything Belmopan has experienced in decades, with runoff channels simply unable to handle the volume rushing through the city.
Pablo Cawich
Pablo Cawich, Mayor, Belmopan
“This was not a specifically a Belmopan issue, in the aspect that where people are saying the drains were clogged up and the water was not moving. The issue was that we had excessive rains in the Belmopan/Armenia area. We had unprecedented levels of rain. From Friday night it started raining, all the way up until Saturday. The rains caused the Belize River and the creek to flood. Our drainage system leads from the Ten Cents Creek, the Mount Pleasant Creek and eventually the Belize River. The route that we take to et to the Belize River is that area where the flooding occurs on the highway area. That area is also a bit small. I know that MIDH have plans to construct a bridge in that area and hopefully that would allow more water to flood through that area.”
Flood Response Hotline Overwhelmed as Residents Seek Help
As the flood emergency unfolded, the Belmopan City Council turned to WhatsApp to hear directly from residents in need. But the response came fast, so fast that the emergency number was eventually flagged and shut down because of the large volume of messages coming in at once. The ministry later stepped in with an online portal, giving residents another way to request help. Together, both platforms have helped the council gather critical information and better coordinate its response on the ground.
Pablo Cawich
Pablo Cawich, Mayor, Belmopan
“Combining both strategies we ended up receiving a hundred and fifty reports. I expressed this morning, that of that one hundred and fifty, approximately seventy people have been assessed and received some form of assistance from BEMO. The last time we had a flood like this in Belmopan, on the highway, was decades ago when we had hurricane Mitch in 1998. That was the last time I saw Belmopan like this weekend. We had received excessive rain over the years. Last year, February J&W had been locked off, it became an island. With the assistance of the MIDH we created a bridge on John Saldivar Bouelevard. That bridge is still functional. It did take a beating with these rains. But it is still functional, thankfully.”
The rain held up at around eleven a.m. on Saturday and by 3 p.m. the flood waters had receded citywide.
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