Orange vigilance for floods has been introduced in Guyana, where the rise in water levels is reaching record levels, particularly on the Maroni, the river which marks the border with Suriname, up to six meters above normal, Vigicrue announced this Wednesday.
Record levels
The orange vigilance should last one or two weeks, for his part specified Lieutenant-Colonel Teddy Bret, interministerial chief of staff of the area at the prefecture. The level of the rivers had already broken records in February and March, flooding several municipalities and forcing the inhabitants to leave their homes to settle higher.
The flood alert concerns in particular the Maroni, out of its bed upstream, where there are places to live accessible only by air or by canoe. In the Native American village of Taluen, the level is six meters above normal. The crops feeding the inhabitants are drowned.
Need for drinking water and food
If the rains have calmed down upstream, “downstream, the level is still rising, especially in the municipalities of Apatou and Grand-Santi”, specifies Lieutenant-Colonel Teddy Bret.
On the Oyapock River, a natural border with Brazil, records have also been broken, but the decline seems to have begun. To come to the aid of the thousands of inhabitants affected, the prefecture is sending drinking water and food by plane or helicopter.
