While they will develop an alternate route into and out of the capital, the fact is that while the 25-year flood was certainly a factor for Saturday's event, the changing landscape is another.
Moody discussed deforestation:
Evondale Moody, Chief Engineer
"Most of the rainfall was just focused over the entire district. Most notably in the Belmopan area. And so the surrounding villages of Cayo South was affected. We believe that those areas were affected because of deforestation happening in the area. There's a lot of that happening in this area honestly, and it is really affecting the runoff and the flow going to our drainages, and the drainage structures that we have, that they're really overcapacity. That they don't have sufficient capacity to deal with these flows."
"And the idea is that those drainage in Belmopan are large. However, because of the land clearing that that is happening beyond Belmopan It's pushing a massive amount of water, through those channels, that those channels even have over-topped. So Belmopan was known to be having large capacity drains, but now, those are even considered small because of the overcapacity and the amount of runoff that is filling this drains in a, in quite a short period of time."
