E d i t o r i a l

Barbados floods too easily. It appears to be quite common in recent times that when the rain falls, it automatically floods, and these floods cause schools to close, the public bus service to be cancelled, roads to be blocked (triggering massive traffic jams), road damage and land slippage and a whole heap of other inconveniences

This disruption to the normal way of life for a few inches of rain is problematic particularly in an island that has increased rainfall during its hurricane season for at least 6 months of the year, very dependent on its dense road network for transportation of goods and people. This seems to be different to 20 or 30 years ago.

In addition to the inconveniences mentioned previously, flooding can cause widespread damage to physical infrastructure, house-hold contents and cause injury and loss of life. Recently, the United Kingdom, where 1 in 5 live in flood risk areas, experienced significant floods in York, Shrewsbury, Somerset and other areas. In January 2023, in Italy, EmiliaRomagna floods left about 15 people dead and forced 13,000 from their homes due to intense rainfall (reportedly, half of their annual rainfall fell in 36 hours) - a true freak event. Closer to home, in our sister island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, on Christmas Eve 2013, torrential rains caused flooding (and landslides and collapses of bridges), which all resulted in 8 fatalities and several injured.

We simply cannot afford to lose precious time and resources because of a failure to act on potential flood mitigation.

Drainage and flood management should be seen as a crucial cog in the wheel of civil works infrastructure in any country Especially when there are major changes to the built environment to affect the natural flow of surface run-off Flooding is a serious issue and it is an engineering issue which means that it must be met with an engineering solution.

It is apparent that we have long-standing runoff problems in certain areas of this countrye g , Goodland, Christ Church and Woodbourne, St. Philip. We know that it would take some resources to remediate those issues - but it must be done; and sooner rather than later

It is time to take a holistic look at integrated flood management as a means to achieve our goals of mitigating inundation. Consideration should be given to island-wide topographical surveys (done by Lidar drones), watershed modelling and analysis (carried out by professional registered engineers), the collection and distribution of the latest rainfall data (by the relevant collection agencies) and the creation of bespoke drainage policy that would give guidance and instruction to the development of lands in critical areas (by the relevant government departments - i.e., Drainage Division in the Ministry of Transport, Works and Water Resources) The approach must be multidisciplinary, multi-sectoral and a collaboration between the public and private sector.

Despite Barbados facing drought conditions currently, it would not be wise to ignore these matters since we are entering our "wet" season.

We do not have the time to delay this matter

Photo 1 - Andrea Ricci, 26, sat exhausted on a dingy that he used to help deliver goods and water to people in the flooded district of Lugo, Italy

Credit: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/27/ world/europe/italy-floods-emiliaromagna.html

Credit: https://floodlist.com/america/caribbean -life-as-we-know-it-at-serious-riskexpert

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