MONTEGO BAY, St James — A flash flood warning is keeping divers, brought in by the St James Municipal Corporation, from making one last push to find 68-year-old Beryl Walters who was swept away by flood waters in Westgate, Montego Bay, last week Tuesday.

“The search has not been called off; we are giving it a last thrust. We are pushing one more time to see if we can get some signs of the missing individual,” acting mayor of Montego Bay Richard Vernon told the Jamaica Observer Monday night.

“We are still planning to use divers to search sections of the river that is not reachable by heavy equipment, and that is the part that is being hampered by the weather. The divers, from their experience, won’t enter the water if we are under a certain condition, and we are still under flash flood warning… so we have to wait and we have to be patient with the situation,” he explained.

The divers were supposed to have started their search on Sunday. On Tuesday, nothing had changed.

Vernon is hoping the weather will cooperate and that there can be some closure for the grieving family that is already grappling with the drowning of Walters’ 12-year-old granddaughter Jennel.

The young girl and her grandmother ended up in the murky waters of Barnett River after the car in which they were travelling with two other family members was pushed into a culvert. Berris Walters, the missing woman’s husband, and his daughter Shannon were rescued.

Almost every day since the incident, weather permitting, groups of relatives and friends have patrolled the banks of the river, hoping to find the missing woman who was so loved by her late granddaughter. On Sunday, there was a massive operation involving the use of heavy equipment to clean debris from the river. Alerted by a strong odour just under the bridge near where the car had entered the water, they were convinced they had found her. That proved to be a false alarm.

If there is no sign of her after the divers’ last attempt, Vernon said, the municipal corporation would then leave the matter up to the police.

“At that point I will turn over the matter to the police for them to do whatever closure they have to do; but for us at the municipal corporation, at that point we would have done our best in terms of helping the family,” he said.