Shas­tri Boodan

Fire­men worked tire­less­ly to res­cue three fam­i­lies trapped by rag­ing flood­wa­ters at Car­li Bay, Cou­va, yes­ter­day.

The team of of­fi­cers from the Cou­va Sta­tion an­chored a line some­time af­ter 7 am and went in through the rag­ing wa­ters. They were as­sist­ed by four young men from the com­mu­ni­ty as they res­cued res­i­dents who were trapped by ris­ing wa­ters.

Re­nat­ta Agard and her son Bran­don La Rosa were the first peo­ple to be saved by the Fire Ser­vice. She said this was the sec­ond time for the year the Fire Ser­vice had saved her. Agard said her ex­pe­ri­ence through the flood was ter­ri­fy­ing.

Shed­ding tears af­ter walk­ing out of the floods to safe­ty, she said, “I was scared, the wa­ter reached in­side the house al­ready.”

Agard said she was alert­ed by a tele­phone call that the flood­wa­ters were ris­ing.

Her neigh­bour, Rad­i­ca Rat­tan, al­so suf­fered loss­es, as her house was filled to chest height with wa­ter.

Res­i­dents said the near­by Cou­va Riv­er had burst its banks and cre­at­ed hav­oc. They said they have been ap­peal­ing for the au­thor­i­ties to dredge and clean the riv­er, which has been clogged with bam­boo and oth­er de­bris for a con­sid­er­able time.

Car­li Bay Fish­er­men As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Im­ti­az Khan said the as­so­ci­a­tion was on­ly get­ting ex­cus­es from the au­thor­i­ties rather than so­lu­tions.

Yes­ter­day, the Car­li Bay Road, which is the main ac­cess to Car­li Bay, was com­plete­ly sub­merged un­der­wa­ter and im­pass­able. Khan said around 100 fish­er­men were af­fect­ed and they may not be able to fish for the rest of the week. He said the fish­er­men are frus­trat­ed and fear the road­way may have suf­fered more dam­age.

He said they com­plained to the Cou­va North MP and the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, who have “done all they can” by way of writ­ing let­ters to the Min­istry of Works.

“The on­ly thing we can do is that we have to ri­ot ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.”

An­gry fish­er­men said they plan to block the ac­cess roads to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate un­less they can ac­cess their fish­ing ves­sels to earn an hon­est liv­ing.

Mean­while, hun­dreds of com­muters were left un­der duress yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the Car­oli­na Bridge at Car­oli­na, Cou­va. Heavy rains caused the al­ready di­lap­i­dat­ed struc­ture to fall in­to the wa­ter­course be­low.

Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh said he had writ­ten count­less let­ters over sev­er­al months beg­ging the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to re­pair the bridge. He said he spoke with Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi fol­low­ing the col­lapse.

In­dars­ingh said Al-Rawi ad­vised him that that bridge would be re­paired by the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, In­dars­ingh said a ten­der would have to be is­sued for the con­struc­tion of the bridge. He said in the in­ter­im, a Bai­ley Bridge should be in­stalled. He said with­out a bridge, res­i­dents would have to take a cost­ly de­tour through Clax­ton Bay to leave the com­mu­ni­ty. He said a taxi may charge as much as $50 for a one-way trip, while per­sons with cars would have to spend an ad­di­tion­al hour “burn­ing fu­el” to get out.

Res­i­dents said they have al­so been ap­peal­ing for as­sis­tance, but their cries have fall­en on deaf ears.