Patricia Green | The day I drove through raging rivers

Last week my gardener used a piece of wire and began pulling out a variety of empty banana, potato, cheesy wrappers, etc., from the underside of my vehicle. I was caught in the flooding of September 19. The drive home, which usually takes half-hour, took three hours.

It started to drizzle when I bought hot peanuts on Balmoral Avenue, quickly became thunder, lightning and flooding when I turned the corner on to Maxfield Avenue. Suddenly, the peanuts were abandoned as I needed to use both hands to grip tightly the steering wheel, to steady the car because Maxfield Avenue was transformed into a turbulent river course, and I was driving upstream.

My vehicle was in the kerb lane, and by the time I inched to the Half-Way Tree Police Station, I had been shifting the vehicle into park and pulling up the emergency brake, praying constantly for the angels of the Lord who encamp around me to deliver me, because the car was being pushed over into the next traffic lane. Additionally, I was bombarded by a deluge of floating plastic bottles, drink crates, black garbage bags, and even a chair and a huge blue plastic drum. Miraculously, these diverted away from my vehicle instead of smashing into it.

I got a shock when I got to the intersection of Maxfield Avenue with Hope, Hagley Park, and Eastwood Park roads – water galloping from the mountains down Hagley Park Road, heading to the sea. I was in deep, deep, a veritable Ezekiel 37 waist-deep rising water experience! The vehicle inched its way, navigating people, debris, buses entering and switching lanes, and even taxis driving on the sidewalk. Finally, I broke free into an amazing calm on Eastwood Park Road that had become a single lane crawl on its elevated side, then on to Constant Spring Road.

Flooding phenomenon

I was struck by the enormity of the flooding impact on Kingston, which meteorologists described as 90 to 140mm of rain falling in an hour and a half being equivalent to rainfall normally experienced across entire September. Reflecting on the various scenarios that have led to such a flooding phenomenon in our city, I asked, what would have created such a build-up and surge of water in a city established on an alluvial plain surrounded by mountains, with water naturally flowing to the sea?

Rapid northern expansion

Do Jamaicans understand that in the same way that Rome has its Tiber River, London its Thames, and Paris its Seine, Kingston has its Sandy River? Yes “River” with several tributaries, versus ‘gully’! Architect and town planner Neil Richards wrote The Gleaner on July 14, 2024 that the Sandy Gully system was a pre-Independence engineering drainage feat that channelled this river across the city to the sea. However, the rapid northern expansion of the city of Kingston in recent decades has caused the flow of stormwater into the Sandy Gully system to be more complex and often uncontrolled.

Christopher Burgess shared in The Gleaner of September 28 that the Jamaican Institution of Engineers discussed among themselves that a National Works Agency (NWA) 2011 Comprehensive Drainage and Flood Control Master Plan for improvement was developed, however, to date, only two of the 44 plans have been implemented since then.

The engineers added that some possible causes of the September 19 flooding stemmed from higher densities permitted under the 2017 Kingston and St. Andrew Development Order, yet without the essential drainage infrastructure to support the resultant high concentrations of apartments. Critically, some apartments were built over drains, with restrictive openings poorly maintained, which choke the safe passage of floodwater.

Infrastructure capacity

When I examine the development order, I see that prior to such density increases, infrastructure must be in place for sewerage, surface water, etc. So why have so many developments been approved in the absence of the infrastructure capacity to accommodate them? Do the approval agencies understand that a development blocking a gully downstream would choke the upstream gully drainage system? Would that explain why a property in the New Kingston area had its boundary wall collapse from a build-up of surface water, thereby flooding the household? Would that explain why residents in communities off Spanish Town Road were flooded out?

The development order was confirmed in 2023, with the absence of the legally required consultations, with additional densities beyond what existed in 2017. The statutes for the development process require that before issuing a building approval, the municipal corporations must submit development proposals to the relevant agencies, such as the NWA responsible for roads and gullies, among others. So, who gave permission for developments to proceed to construction that negatively affects the free-flow of drainage across the gullies? What was the impact of the flood on those sewerage pipes that the NWA permitted for installation inside its gully system?

As a survivor of a small-plane crash-landing in Caymanas cane field on November 27, 1990, I was greatly moved by the tragic loss of four people on September 23 who died in a plane crash in Brazil. One was architect Kongjian Yu who delivered at the Conference of the ‘Council of Architecture and Urbanism of Brazil’. Yu shared there his “sponge city” philosophy that the government of Brazil was interested to implement, that cities “must retain water, slow down water, embrace water..

He advocated for systems to reimagine modern architecture with infrastructure that can absorb rainwater to mitigate flood risks, and improve the urban climate as sound development. He argued that the conventional solution of concrete gully infrastructure creates more carbon emissions, is ugly and dangerous, causing overflow and failures of these gullies.

Thank God there was no loss of lives in Kingston that day. We call on the responsible agencies to re-address development breaches that are exacerbating water and sewerage back-up and flooding in the city, and approve only flood-sensitive developments.

Patricia Green, PhD, a registered architect and conservationist, is an independent scholar and advocate for the built and natural environment. Send feedback to patgreen2008@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com