Belize City Streets Flooded: Mayor Attributes Prolonged Flooding to Climate Change

This morning, residents were forced to dodge flood waters in Belize City after heavy showers left several streets inundated in a city below sea level. While most of the water has receded, there are a few streets where the water will remain stagnant and cause issues for residents. The issue has led to many questioning whether the problem will ever be solved and what has caused the prolonged flooding. Today, Belize City Mayor Bernard Wagner pointed to the changes in weather patterns brought on by climate change. 

Bernard Wagner, Mayor of Belize City: “Changing weather patterns all across the globe, all across the world, all across the region. If you look at the, how the impact of these changing weather patterns and how in one quick span of time you could have extensive torrential rain and the many of the infrastructure, many of the cities in the region and internationally have been facing this. And you could, don’t take my word for it, you could go and look it up and you would see that these type of patterns is becoming more and more prevalent and as such we as the citizenry and we as municipal leaders have to be constantly ensuring that we have the sort of mitigating infrastructure in place to alleviate the occasional flooding that occurs similarly like yesterday. It rained from what I gathered we got close to three inches of rainfall very quickly within a short span of time. And obviously that created, that coupled with the fact that Belize City really lies if not beneath sea level very close to sea level and engineers have indicated that to me on several occasions. And so when that occurs then you will have these type of flooding. But I am pleased with the runoff. The runoff is pretty quickly. If you are able to have been traversing the city yesterday evening and by the time you would have gotten up this morning those rains would have subsided as well as the flooding.”