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Record flood waters covered western Belize this weekend and tonight the threat for extended and continued flooding in central and northern Belize is very real. But the most pressing situation is in the Cayo District where 66 people are in shelters and two villages, Bullet Tree and Calla Creek are mostly underwater. About 49 families live in the extreme western village of Calla Creek and tonight ten of those families are homeless. Flood waters swept through the village on Saturday morning, taking with it homes, crops, livestock, and a new rope bridge installed a week ago. Today when we visited with a team from NEMO in Cayo, flood waters were still rising and life was far from normal. Keith Swift has the story.

Keith Swift Reporting,
In Calla Creek the ferocious flood waters forced residents out of their homes and into these hastily built huts. To give you an idea of the flooding situation, what is around me and what I am standing around and in was dry land three days ago.

The water I stood in was Maria Smith’s front yard. That is why now all her possessions are outside and why she and her family – including her 68 year old mother- have spent the last three days in this small shack built with scrap zinc.

Maria Smith, Calla Creek Resident
“We just hurry built something that we can just get our things out and store it there. We went over with my cousin out on the hill. Friday evening we monitored, we were looking at the river and it was rising pretty quick so we decided we would move what we can at the morning. And then the Saturday in the morning it was already high so we had to go under water and take out what we had to and my cousins they came from Cayo and we, we didn’t want to move because we wanted to help the neighbours around.”

The Smiths were lucky. This morning other villagers were just ferrying out their water soaked and damaged possessions by boats, this one added new meaning to the term horsepower, as horses pulled it. That luck to even recover damaged possessions wasn’t on Carlos Perez’s side.

Carlos Perez, Flood Victim
“My house done, the water took it all from my house and not only from my house but all of the houses. On the next side it is the same thing and from up there the same thing. And the next thing is the people don’t have a lot of food right now and water and all of us have small kids and we really need medicine for that.”

We were there when NEMO arrived with supplies. But food and water was no consolation to Melva Vasquez. She now calls this hut home and was in tears when she told us in Spanish that she lost everything.

Melva Vasquez, Flood Victim
[Translation] “The house is under water and that is the reason why they had to get out from there. They got out the kids and the clothes and everything stayed there.”

Keith Swift,
So everything is gone?

Melva Vasquez,
“She is saying that since the house is under water, mostly likely everything is gone. She is very sad about it and at the moment she feels like cry because there is nowhere she can go and at least if her house would be there then she would have hope that she could always go back.”

Keith Swift,
Has she ever seen this type of flooding before?

Melva Vasquez,
“No.”

In fact the only person we could find who has experienced flooding like this was this 68 year old. She said the year was 1961 and we didn’t need a translator for the name: Hattie.

Calla Creek Resident,
“Hattie. She said they were on the other side of the river and they experienced a similar thing like this but it was a bit higher.”

Maria Smith,
“I haven’t seen it. It is the first time we are experiencing it and it is history for us. My mom yes because she experienced this for hurricane Hattie, they had similar experience like this.

It is nature, we cannot go against nature. I can only say thank God that we are alive and we don’t have anyone so far die but we do have a lot of losses. People lost most of their things like plantations under water, the cattle and animals are all gone.”

And for some perspective, Calla Creek is near Clarissa Falls, just a stone’s throw from Melchor. There are 200 residents.