Douglas village sites just north of the Albion islands. It is highly flood prone and it has been that way for decades. Today, the Prime Minister had a sobering perspective on the chronic flooding in that village:
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Douglas. Douglas, I remember from the time when my father was here, representatives in 1974 to 1984. It was during this time, I think it's around 1976, that the flooding was so bad that they set up Nuevo San Juan so that everybody should have moved to San Juan. Many moved but a lot stayed. And some of them that moved sold their land in Nuevo San Juan and came back to to Douglas, Every year we're spending an inordinate amount of moneys and effort to try to help. As it is right now we're looking at declaring, Douglas, the health department should declare it a health hazard because of the pit latrines, there are many, many pit latrines that are under water. So all of that water is coming out and people can get sick. So we are again, working with representative, with Monchie, fixing the community center in San Pablo between today and tomorrow, so that by Saturday we could move everybody out there."
"Thinking long term, certainly in our next government, God willing, we may need to buy out all of these people and give them land somewhere else. And so then we can just shut down Douglas Village. And then so that then people can go there for recreational purposes, but not to live, because every year we have the same problem over and over and over."
"They expect the government to help them, it's not fair to Belizean tax payers to go out every year to go out and bail out. Although we have to help them, they are our citizens, so we have to start to think about long term. And this is one of the things we're talking about about, adaptability. We have to adapt to the reality of, of, of, today."
