In the interview with Espat he also discussed how they are seeing flooding in unusual areas such as mile 7 on the Hummingbird - which is not known to flood. Espat says the increasing expansion of flood areas is due to deforestation:
Julius Espat - Minister of Infrastructure
"The Coastal was the one that gave us problems earlier on and it still has some problems but now we're experiencing problems at mile 7 on the Hummingbird close to Xaibel Gas Station, a bus was washed off the road. We sent in equipment, they're there already to be able to pull the bus back on the highway and to help residents to see if they can cross it in case it's an emergency. We also closed that road temporarily, the engineer Triston Usher is on site personally, he's the guy in charge of that zone. So we're doing everything possible from our side to be able to help people."
"the south, you're seeing a lot because of the mountainous terrain and we're starting to deforest the mountains, some call it hills not mountains. And so all of this deforestation is affecting us considerably. We have been saying this from I got into the ministry. Because that was one of the items that we noticed. And that's why in Cabinet it was decided to put a moratorium on logging for a while to see where the country is and how we can look at the situation. We are not putting enough attention to the environment, and we're changing the whole ecosystem and these are the results, the infrastructure that you design will not be able to hold up to it entirely."
"What concerns me though is that the main arteries to the south, both the Coastal and the Hummingbird experienced problems at the same time and it's an indication that we have to look at that and see where the weak points are and how we can do better."
"the entire south right now is the problem, village by village you will see the problem because we have some of the problems on the main highway but a lot of the villages are not reporting, some of the bridges that are by the rivers will rise and have flooding, the wooden bridges in those small communities will have problems."
