Lamp Island family ready to evacuate to escape flood

The massive flooding in Region Ten (Upper Demerara-Berbice) is taking a toll on those villages along the Berbice River, especially Lamp Island.

"It is really difficult because the water is extremely high. The water is about 8 feet high already and where we're living, we're living on a low part of Lamp Island."

These are the words of Esther Davis, a resident of Lamp Island, who is ready to pack her belongings and relocate her family to an area where flooding would no longer be a concern.

She is frustrated and is calling for government's intervention to relocate her family, as she continues to lose income.

"The flood has affected me in so many ways, we had a kitchen Garden that we used to farm just to keep the kitchen going and we had some livestock we used to mine; lil yard fowl and lil duck and they died."

Now with her source of income destroyed, Davis has no clue about the next step she has to take for her family of eight.

She explained that her family, as well as other residents in the community are contracting diseases brought on by the contaminated flood waters.

"By the raise of the water, there is a little [common] cold going on due to the weather and we have this thing that the water used to get coming out on our skins like rash, some reddy reddy thing due to the change of the water. The water is very dirty how the water raise."

Meanwhile, the woman's sister had to flee her house and seek refuge with her family as the flood waters came rushing into her home and although Davis' home is on high stilts, the rising water is causing panic in the household.

"The water is on our flooring but we didn't move because we don't have anywhere to go right now. The water is coming up and we have our chairs, freezer and certain things in our house and we would really like to move out."

Government has also sent a team into the region to deliver flood relief hampers and to assess the damage there.

Only on Tuesday, MTV News Update reported of a massive flash flood in Mahdia, Region Eight, (Potaro-Siparuni) and surrounding villages. That water has since receded and residents are cleaning to return to normalcy.

The current floods are the result of heavy rainfall, which leads to the overtopping of the banks of major rivers and canals.