Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Flood­wa­ter has fi­nal­ly re­ced­ed and many vil­lagers in Bam­boo No 2 are now able to re­turn to their homes af­ter days of wa­ter cov­er­ing those struc­tures.

Vil­lagers had been un­able to en­ter their homes for close to five days due to un­prece­dent­ed lev­els of flood­wa­ter in their com­mu­ni­ty.

The com­mu­ni­ty was abuzz yes­ter­day, as many tried to count their loss­es as re­lief con­tin­ued com­ing in from cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es.

Vil­lager and pen­sion­er Gor­lin Ram­s­ingh, 77, whose home was on­ly ac­ces­si­ble on Fri­day, broke down in tears as she could not cope with the loss.

She said, “I re­main with noth­ing. In the first flood in 2018, I re­mained with a lit­tle bit of stuff, but in this flood, I lost every sin­gle thing. I have noth­ing, ab­solute­ly noth­ing. All my clothes in the garbage here, mat­tress and bed, every­thing is lost and I re­main with noth­ing and I have no­body to help me here.”

She added: “My hus­band passed away two years ago and I am a pen­sion­er, that is what I liv­ing on to sur­vive. I have no­body, all my chil­dren are away (USA). I am the on­ly one liv­ing here and I don’t know if I would make it here.”

Vil­lagers are still blam­ing a breach of the Ca­roni Riv­er bank and the wa­ter pump for their per­il.

The vil­lage was lit­tered with dis­card­ed fur­ni­ture, ap­pli­ances and per­son­al items when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day.

Vil­lager Anand Sookram, who lives di­rect­ly be­hind the wa­ter pump, said he was hap­py to be back home af­ter the wa­ter had sub­sided.

“Al­though the sit­u­a­tion looked very grim, we are now see­ing the height of the wa­ter here and we lost every­thing that the wa­ter came in­to con­tact with. We were able to make some prepa­ra­tions be­fore the flood­ing, but the prepa­ra­tions that we made were not suf­fi­cient,” Sookram said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment were on hand to as­sist the vil­lagers.