Sept. 17, 2004 – When the rains from Tropical Storm Jeanne threatened, Mon Bijou residents were ready for the worst.
Tuesday's rains came and residents breathed a sigh of relief. No homes flooded.
As the deluge continued through Wednesday, residents felt the odds stacking against them.
Finally, on Thursday around 2 a.m., neighbors started rousing neighbors to warn each other of the floodwaters raging down from Blue Mountain.
"My neighbor woke me up," Delores James said. "Water was everywhere."
James has been a resident of the Frangipani section of Mon Bijou since 1970. The natural gut that runs between her home and her neighbor's washed mud, rocks, cement blocks and even an old car battery through the property, leaving over one-and-one-half inches of muddy water in all the rooms of her home.
"When the water comes down the mountain, we can hear it. It sounds like a train," Elroy Bascombe, Frangipani resident said. "The water has a path; it comes through here and that is the way it is going to go."
"This is unbelievable. This is always going to go on until they fix it," James said. "All my banana trees are down."
James was referring to the long-awaited Mon Bijou flood-control project. The project promises to reroute the floodwaters by creating a channel that diverts the water around the community and eventually drains into Salt River. ("See Mon Bijou Flood Control Groundbreaking Is Tuesday").
Ira Claxton lives across the street from James. His home is in the direct path of the natural gut. "It's my birthday," Claxton said on Thursday. "And it's depressing. The mud and water came all through my house," he said as he continued shoveling mud from his walkway.
Claxton said he and his neighbors frantically tried to clear a drainage located in the street in front of his home in Thursday's early morning hours. The drain, which spans the width of the road, is approximately four feet deep and three feet wide and topped with a heavy metal grating.
Claxton is optimistic about the flood control project. "The gut can be diverted if the channel is dug deep enough," he said. "We'll wait and see how it works."
"The only thing that is going to solve the residents' problems is the flood control project," Kamau Kambui, Mon Bijou homeowners' association president, said.
So, the residents anxiously watch the weather reports as they await the completion of the project that promises to end their flooding problems.
"I've lost so much," James lamented.
James said she is going to stick it out in the hope that the government will solve the problems that have been plaguing her neighbors for close to 30 years.
"I'm too old to move. I have no choice," she said.
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