Latest News #304 – Guyana
February 25, 2005

The following news concerns Guyana.

Societies send Scriptures
to flooded Guyana

GUYANA — Floods that immobilised parts of Guyana, leaving 34 people dead and causing more than 300,000 to lose their possessions, have now receded leaving the country to focus on recovery and rehabilitation.

Several national Bible Societies in the region responded to the crisis, Guyana's worst natural disaster, by sending Scripture Portions and sufficient New Testaments to replace the number estimated to have been lost.

Record rainfall in mid-January brought flooding affecting people living in low-lying coastal areas near the capital, Georgetown.

The Rev Erle Deira, General Secretary of the Suriname Bible Society which is responsible for Bible work in neighbouring Guyana, said that while Bible Society offices were spared any damage, they had had to be closed – along with government and business offices – because floods had brought all road and water traffic to a halt.

Thousands of people living in ground floor accommodation had to be evacuated to schools and hospitals, he said, and the government distributed 250,000 meals daily to displaced people.

January is one of Guyana's two rainy seasons – the other takes place in the period from May to June and Georgetown floods easily. Like many of the nearby villages, it is situated below sea-level and maintenance of its drainage and pumping system has been acknowledged to be inadequate. In spite of heavy rain at the beginning of the month, at that stage officials had publicly discounted the possibility of serious flooding.

It was only on January17, after 24 hours of heavy and continuous rainfall brought high volumes of water down from the higher reaches of the country, that flooding of roads and homes in and around Georgetown reached a level that caused concern.

By January 24 more than 3,000 people were living in government shelters and health officials were worried that stagnant water might cause an outbreak of disease – fears which were compounded by further heavy rains over the weekend of January 29-30.

On February 10 the United Nations was quoted as saying that 40 per cent of the population – 300,000 people – had lost some or all of their possessions. And in addition to the six people drowned at the height of the rains, 20 more died from leptospirosis, a disease contracted from water contaminated with the urine of infected animals.

Although the international community was said to have been slow to respond to Guyana's crisis because of the Asian tsunami, Brazil, the European Union, Caricom, the US, Chile and the United Nations have all sent shipments of humanitarian aid.

On February 10, more than a week after life in Georgetown was said to have returned to normal, the head of Guyana's civil defence commission told BBC News that at least 10 communities along the eastern coast were still under water.