Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer
Residents of Kennedy Grove examine the devastation caused from flood waters.Leonardo Blair, Enterprise Reporter
Everybody saw it on national television in October after Tropical Storm Wilma those now infamous houses in Kennedy Grove, Clarendon houses looking like rooftops floating on water, flooded, like Nightingale Grove in St. Catherine. But unlike Nightingale Grove, the water in Kennedy Grove had little place to run.
So it filled, then overflowed a 'natural pond' left in the community for recreation by the developers of the scheme. It also left some people like Carlene Clarke trapped for days.
It's a late November afternoon in Kennedy Grove. A stewing heat is lifting moisture from the waterlogged earth. The pond is now placid, a light wind rippling its murky-looking surface.
fairly new community
The community is fairly new, barely five years old, hardly heard of in Jamaica until Wilma. Looking at it now, it's hard to believe the houses here had been sold on the market for over $2 million with the ominous pond so close by.
A few houses from the entrance of the community is Carlene's house. The one with the bright red sofa and white pillows in the sweltering sun. Her young daughter hangs on to her for safety as I get to hear her story. Another rustle of the wind is heard as Carlene opens up.
"I had to pay $1.1 million up front, along with NHT's $800,000 for a pond," shrills Carlene. "I planted my lovely flowers and everyone of them dead. My what-not, my wardrobe, my settee, a lot of things got damaged. I would love to get back my money. I made sure I put all the receipts under lock and key,Ó explains a feisty Carlene, who moved to Kennedy Grove in December 2001. Anger sits on her like a cloak.
Water from the flood ransacked her house Ð and her life. Her watermarked walls seem haunted by a spirit of perpetual danger.
Carlene is an unemployed mother of one, too ill to work and depending entirely on family here and overseas for support.
This mess should never have been her lot, she recalls. And she still has to pay a tidy mortgage, but doesnÕt want to reveal just how much for fear of unwittingly leading criminals to her home.
ÒI feel cheated,Ó she laments. ÒWhen I went to do the transaction with the developers, this wasnÕt supposed to be my lot. I was supposed to be further up. In 2001, I told the staff at the place (developer, KIDDCO) to make sure is a good lot.
ÒNow, no value is on this house anymore. For days I was marooned and when I ran out of food, I had to cut out my fence at the back to get out and go to May Pen for food. Every time it rains you have to start to fret. If it rains for more than three days, you canÕt tell what will happen.Ó
Like residents in Nightingale Grove housing scheme in St. Catherine, Carlene and other residents of Kennedy Grove are asking questions too. How could this have happened? WasnÕt the site on which Kennedy Grove was built a known flood-prone area? Minister of Land and Environment Dean Peart has already admitted that the Government has erred in allowing the Kennedy Grove Development to have been built.
Prime Minister P.J. Patterson is still trying to figure out what went wrong. Information from his office indicates that the investigation which he ordered on the Nightingale Grove and Kennedy Grove developments is yet to be completed. In the meantime, the questions remain. Who is to blame? Who is to pay?
