Pe­ter Christo­pher

The first day of ma­jor clean-up ef­forts in Green­vale, La Hor­quet­ta was al­so the first time many res­i­dents re­turned to their homes in days.

Ali­cia Ed­wards was one of them who wit­nessed the ex­tent of the dam­age for the very first time, as CEPEP work­ers pulled her dam­aged fur­ni­ture from her home.

She had stayed at La Hor­quet­ta com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre since Fri­day.

“I couldn’t come back home so I went to work an pick up my son,” she told the T&T Guardian.

Ed­wards said she lost three tele­vi­sions, two stoves, fridge, books or as she sim­ply put,

“Every­thing.”

It was a re­sponse that most res­i­dents said when asked what they need­ed to be re­placed.

Ed­wards sat in a beach chair in front of her house, with the fur­ni­ture which once adorned her home be­hind her. The items were stacked on her lawn by CEPEP work­ers, who were now look­ing for wa­ter to help wash away the sludge in­side.

“It kin­da just over­whelm­ing. You can’t re­al­ly catch your­self. It feels like a shock back,” said Ed­wards.

While Ed­wards was on­ly now com­ing to terms with the dam­age, Brid­gette Prince re­turned to a scene of trau­mat­ic mem­o­ries.

She, and her daugh­ter, on­ly es­caped her home through her back win­dow fire es­cape with the help of her neigh­bour.

“They wasn’t in this, to un­der­stand it,” said Prince, “Every­thing in here I pay for this and it hard for me to spend my mon­ey now to be go­ing through this.”

She, how­ev­er, gave great thanks to the maxi dri­ver who drops her to work dai­ly, who took her in over the week­end.

“He came out here the morn­ing he say fam­i­ly we not leav­ing you. I come for you and your daugh­ter. And we stay­ing across there, and he eh watch­ing to see what we eat or we drink. He treats we like fam­i­ly,” said Prince, who said the com­mu­ni­ty need­ed help.

There was no short­age of help com­ing in, how­ev­er, as there was sig­nif­i­cant traf­fic with nu­mer­ous vol­un­teers com­ing in­to the area.

Of­fi­cials from T&TEC, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, po­lice, fire of­fi­cers and cadets were present in the area, as­sist­ing in var­i­ous ways.

Sev­er­al of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment were al­so in the area do­ing as­sess­ments.

A crew from the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps was al­so there help­ing a trainee clean out a home.

While there they al­so lent as­sis­tance to wheel­chair-bound Jules Fe­lix.

“They ask us to as­sist this dis­abled gen­tle­man here be­cause no one wasn’t there to help him,” said Dar­rell Jack­son, who head­ed the 12 man CCC crew.

“ We wash down the walk­way for him, we clean up one of his wheel­chairs, we clean­ing the next one and giv­ing some as­sis­tance to him same time,” said Jack­son.

Jules was thank­ful for the crew’s help but was cu­ri­ous if his car, a wag­on could be saved.

His car, like many cars in the area, were filled with sludge.