THERE were no obvious signs yesterday of preparation for the approaching hurricane at either Nightingale Grove or Big Pond -flood prone areas in St Catherine that have seen repeated displacement of residents during heavy rainfall.

In fact there was a sense of apathy and/or resignation among residents in both communities.

For Red Pond residents, it’s a disaster waiting to recur. A few metres from the main road, a stagnant pond, swollen to capacity, appeared set to spill its contents.

Across the road from the pond, is the home of Lorraine Spence.

“It always flood and I have lived here all my life, “the twenty-odd year old told the Sunday Observer yesterday.

She said the pond rarely ever goes dry, and whenever it rains the road, which links the village to Old Harbour, often becomes impassable.

“The last time we have hurricane the whole place flood. All around, houses were under water,” she said.

But despite this previous knowledge, preparations for Hurricane Dean was the last thing on Spence’s mind yesterday.

Spence said simply that she had nowhere else to go, and planned to be on the alert in case her house floods.

“What else mi fi do?” she asked rhetorically.

With an air of resignation, Spence added that in the past her house had flooded “almost to the ceiling”.

“From me inna grade one at school, me a live with it,” said Spence, now a young mother of three.

Spence recalled that as far back as in the 1980s, as a young child, then Prime Minister Edward Seaga had travelled by boat to her house after the pond flooded the entire area.

Her neighbour, Angella Smith, agreed, adding that as long as she can remember promises have been made about addressing the situation in the area.

“Since 2004 them even promise to fix the roads, and nothing happen.”

Both women said they were not that concerned about the possibility of flooding; this was expected. They said instead that their greatest concerns at this time were the wind that would accompany Hurricane Dean and a lack of food.

“Mi can’t do nothing bout the flood water, what me want is food,” said Smith.

Most of the residents in Red Pond appear to have come to accept the repeated flooding as their unchangeable fate.

“When it flood it, cost us up to $500 to go Old Harbour. We have to take the long way over the hill or use boat,” one young resident told the Sunday Observer.

The designated hurricane shelter for the community is at the Davis School closer to Old Harbour township, however, residents contend that they are cut of from the shelter whenever the pond floods and they are reluctant to leave their homes.

They prefer to remain at home, they say.

“God is able. We will pray,” said Smith.

At the flood-prone Nightingale Grove housing scheme, residents were also not making grand plans.

Hortense Morgan, whose house has been repeatedly flooded, lives at the edge of the Barton’s Gully, which, when in spate, dumps hundreds of gallons of water completely covering some homes in the scheme.

“We just haffi pack up and leave,” said Morgan. She told the Sunday Observer that she would secure her “belongings” inside the house and stay with friends “when the place begins to flood”.