These days rain is not a force of nature welcomed by residents in a number of Portland communities.

That’s because, for just about a month now, the showers have triggered landslides on the main road leading to Holywell National Forest Park in the Blue Mountain range.

Yesterday, they voiced frustration at being forced to travel through Mavis Bank in order to return home once their regular route is blocked by boulders and large heaps of debris.

“It just come down so sudden. We did even stop driving across it and had to walk. It is very dangerous. A tractor would come and clear up the road but we take chances sometimes and come over it,” 48-year-old Melvin Pryce, who lives in Cascade, Portland, told the Jamaica Observer.

“It really risky, with those stones at the top up there; you have to be going and you have to be watching them. If it looks like it will rain, we have to be trying to head over back [home] because the road will block up,” added Pryce.

Another resident from Cascade, 58-year-old Rainford Haase, shared a similar concern.

“It is the first I see a big landslide like this. It is very dangerous. Even last week I went to Kingston and I couldn’t come back this side, because as I pass somebody called to tell me it was blocked again,” he said, adding that the impassable road has prevented him from getting to work a few times.

“Up to Wednesday I came here and couldn’t pass, I had to turn back. I have been making phone calls in order for them (the authorities) to hurry up because is like dem leave it, like dem nuh business with it. It’s causing a major problem right now,” he said.

One man from Balcarres, Portland, who gave his name as Bobo Richie, said that the road condition is more dangerous for motorists who travel at nights.

“The road is in a critical condition. So the road clear up, so it (stone) come down and the rainy season mek the situation worse. Rain fall up here every day. You have people passing in the night and it worse when the rain fall. Right now we have a big stone there and the tractor can’t move it,” he said.

Communities in Portland are not the only ones affected.

A caretaker at Holywell National Forest Park told the Observer that the landslides have resulted in a slowdown in business, which was already facing challenges caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“Visitors would normally travel that route so when they cannot pass they would travel through Mavis Bank, but the road is very difficult so most people who make reservations would cancel,” said Renardo Lowe, who has been working at the park for three years.

On Wednesday, National Works Agency Communications Manager Stephen Shaw, when contacted about road rehabilitation, said, “It is a massive earth movement that has taken place there. It is an entire mountain side that has shifted and we have cleared it up a couple of times but the area is unstable. So we are looking to bench the hillside.”

“Hopefully, it will become stable before too long but there is little that we can do. But, of course, we also expect that if it rains heavily, given the fact that the material is quite loose, the road is likely to become impassable once more. But we are monitoring it,” said Shaw.