Daraine Luton, Staff Reporter

Ambrozine Talbot points to the problematic water channel, which when blocked, trapswater in Brooks Pen, St. Andrew, causing flooding. In the background men work to clean the drain. - Norman Grindley/Deputy Chief Photographer

IMAGINE being forced to elevate your bed and other furniture whenever there is the threat of thunderstorms.

Add to that the injustice of having to walk through murky water in order to enter or leave the confines of your home.

Well, this is the regular fear of persons who live at Brooks Pen, Eight Miles, Bull Bay in St. Andrew.

Separated from the sea by the Eight Miles main road, Brooks Pen is under water. The residents said the water came from the nearby sea and, unless a nearby culvert is desilted, the problem will remain until it slowly evaporates.

Ambrozine Talbot, a 75-year-old resident who lives across the road from the flooded community, told The Gleaner on Tuesday that Brooks Pen was once a section of a pond located beside the Bull Pen playing field.

"It was dumped up in 1939," she said.

Ms. Talbot said that in years gone by the culvert, a four-foot concrete channel which took water from Brooks Pen to the sea, used to be cleaned regularly.

"They have stopped cleaning it and that is why the problem occurs," she told The Gleaner.

Rosie, a resident of Brooks Pen concurs, but stressed the need for a bigger channel to take water off the property.

In the meantime, the residents are not sitting down in anticipation of help from the authorities or politicians. Instead, many have taken buckets and shovels in hand and have embarked on cleaning the drains in order to rid their community of the murky water, at least for now.

daraine.luton@gleanerjm.com