SASCHA WIL­SON

Al­though the floods were grad­u­al­ly re­ced­ing in some parts of Wood­land yes­ter­day, sev­er­al homes and sec­tions of road­way were still in­un­dat­ed with wa­ter. Pre­matie Dwarpaul, whose house has been sur­round­ed by floods for the past three days, said it has been a very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion for her and her son.

“We get flood­ed out in Oc­to­ber. We did not even get over that now and now we get flood out again. This is too hard,” she said.

Dwarpaul was among res­i­dents who got do­na­tions of mat­tress­es and oth­er re­lief sup­plies from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. Clean­ing sup­plies and wa­ter were al­so hand­ed out to af­fect­ed res­i­dents.

As he wad­ed through his flood­ed yard in tall boots to col­lect sup­plies, Roger Jaimun­gal, 75, com­plained that all his house­hold items, in­clud­ing fridge, stove and bed, were dam­aged when three feet of wa­ter gushed in­to his home.

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, who car­ried a case of wa­ter through the floods for Jaimun­gal, said al­though there was some flood­ing the wa­ter had gone down sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Sinanan, who opt­ed out of the PNM’s Con­ven­tion in To­ba­go yes­ter­day to vis­it flood-af­fect­ed ar­eas in south Trinidad, said ex­ces­sive rains were to blame for the flood­ing.

He said: “Every­one is talk­ing about the pumps, the pumps...if the wa­ter chan­nels are breached and over­flow, where you pump­ing the wa­ter to?”

Drainage su­per­vi­sor for the area, Ku­marie Ram­gat­tie, con­firmed that all 13 sluice gates were work­ing.

Sinanan said the Works Min­istry will be re-en­gi­neer­ing some wa­ter­cours­es and cut­ting new chan­nels to han­dle in­creased vol­umes of wa­ter. How­ev­er, he said cit­i­zens have to take some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the sit­u­a­tion be­cause peo­ple are con­struct­ing struc­tures on swamp­land.

Re­spond­ing to com­plaints about the poor re­sponse by state agen­cies, the min­is­ter said: “When the flood is on, there is not much that can be done. In Trinidad and To­ba­go, we do not have manda­to­ry evac­u­a­tion.”

He said he has been li­ais­ing with the Min­is­ters of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Pub­lic Util­i­ties about the sit­u­a­tion.

The Mo­hess Road Foun­da­tion Help­ing Crew, which put to­geth­er al­most food ham­pers be­tween Sat­ur­day night and yes­ter­day, as well as 16,000 chan­na sand­wich­es, were among sev­er­al NGOs as­sist­ing af­fect­ed res­i­dents. In ad­di­tion, peo­ple have been us­ing boats, trac­tors and trucks to trans­port res­i­dents and pro­vide them with food, wa­ter and even mat­tress­es.