Burger Gully still recovering from last week’s flooding

Two hours of rainfall last Friday turned Burger Gully, located off Spanish Town Road in Kingston, into a waist-high swamp, destroying furniture, washing away goods, and leaving residents fearful of what heavier showers this weekend could bring.

Inside one family yard, the marks of the flood still stain the walls, waist level in some rooms, chest-high in others. Since then, the residents have been cleaning non-stop, surrounded by ruined furniture, appliances, and swarms of flies. Sandbags and zinc sheets are stacked at the back door in a desperate attempt to keep the water out.

"Every time it rains, we experience this. We change our furniture more than we can count," one resident said, pointing to what should have been his dining table. "The furniture dem basically dry rotten now."

He recalled that he never slept last Friday, instead sitting upright in a chair in the flooded room, waiting out the rising water.

For Garfield Webb, the flooding is only the latest in a series of setbacks. Shot in his right leg in 2022, he now lives with iron screws in his foot. The injury forced him to give up his work as a mason and instead sell refreshments. But the rains washed away his small stall.

"The bone shattered and I can't get to work, which is why I have this likkle business and the rain just come and wash weh everything," he told THE STAR. "The water rim mi mattress, heavy with mud. The likkle savings mi have gone. Mi just buy back likkle goods, and the rain wash them weh again."

With peroxide in hand to clean his leg, Webb pointed to the back door facing the gully. Six sandbags had shifted under pressure, leaving him scrambling to nail up a zinc sheet. In the chaos, his fridge was swept away and later found on 17 Lane, several streets away.

"Me feel nervous 'bout this weekend. Me can't even imagine if a hurricane or storm fi come," he admitted.

Webb's struggles are mirrored across the community. A few houses down, Merlin Edwards stood in her yard, where nearly two feet of mud and garbage had piled up.

"My clothes gone and mi have no clothes. We can't take a next one and we no done yet," she said.

Others, like Madeline, were left distraught after floodwaters destroyed their small shops. She wept as she described throwing away rice, sugar, and other stock.

"We uncomfortable and mi worried for mi pickney health," she said, explaining that her children were already feeling the effects of the damp and filth.

Residents said that after Hurricane Beryl last year, the gully had been repaired, but those works quickly deteriorated, leaving them back at square one. Despite building their own barriers, the water easily overwhelmed them.

Burger Gully is one of several drainage channels feeding into the Kingston Harbour, but in recent years, poorly maintained gullies across the Corporate Area have worsened flooding. Last year, the National Works Agency said it would need billions to overhaul drainage islandwide, warning that decades-old systems are no match for today's heavier rainfall.

With just two hours of rain pushing water into their homes, residents of Burger Gully can only imagine what a full weekend of showers, or another storm might bring.