By JADE RUSSELL 

and EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporters

TROPICAL Storm Imelda left homes flooded, power lines down and roads impassable across parts of the northwest and central Bahamas before beginning to pull away from the country yesterday.

In Pinewood, water mixed with sewage rushed into homes overnight on Sunday, forcing families to stay awake as it crept through floors, bathtubs and toilets. “It’s hard to sleep thinking that you might put your foot down in water,” said resident Monique Clarke, whose refrigerator and bed sat in three to four inches of ais throughout the whole house, even in our bedroom. It’s everywhere, so we have to just move through the water.”

By yesterday afternoon, her yard still looked like a river. She said the smell was “horrible” and that her family was waiting for the water to recede before they could begin cleaning.

In Carmichael, one man waded through the street holding his trousers high to avoid the rising water. Resident Andrew Duncombe, who has lived in the area for 40 years, said his family used buckets to clear water from their home. “We had minimal damage, but the road is cut off until a pump truck comes,” he said. Housing Minister Keith Bell later estimated that about 100 homes in Carmichael were extensively flooded, with destroyed furniture, ruined sheetrock and damaged electrical systems.

Other communities also suffered. A woman in Adastra Gardens said she could not leave her house until the rain stopped on Monday morning. Pinewood MP Myles Laroda said about ten residents were evacuated from his constituency, while 14 people from Pinewood and Nassau Village spent the night at the Nassau Village Community Centre.

The government promised support but acknowledged limitations. Prime Minister Philip Davis said low-lying limestone terrain and a rising water table make drainage difficult. “You could drill holes and you could bring some relief, but not sufficiently need to bring immediate relief,” he said. “Hence, you have pump trucks out as we speak, pulling off the water.”

Schools were also hit. The Ministry of Education said all public schools would reopen today except for Sandilands Primary, Cleveland Eneas, Sadie Curtis, Stephen Dillet, Gerald Cash and Central Abaco Primary, which were closed due to flooding.

Power was another challenge. Bahamas Power and Light chief operations officer Anthony Christie said crews dealt with transformer explosions, flooding and fallen high-voltage lines. He said BPL logged 582 outage calls in New Providence over the weekend, affecting more than 1,500 customers in communities including Chippenham, East Bay Street, Nassau Village, Wulff Road, Paradise Island and Pinewood. “Most of the restoration on New Providence, again, was addressed within 24 hours,” he said, though parts of Paradise Island, South Beach Estates, Bamboo Boulevard, the Grove West and Millennium Gardens remained offline yesterday.

Disaster Reconstruction Authority official Aarone Sargent said Ministry of Works teams were already on the ground providing relief. “We’ve also evacuated a number of those residents to shelters that are still active as we speak,” he said.

Meteorologists said Imelda was expected to move completely out of Bahamian waters by last night, with showers and possible surge lingering over Grand Bahama and Abaco before the storm strengthened into a hurricane further north.