SHAS­TRI BOODAN

A freak storm in Cen­tral Trinidad has left 10 peo­ple with­out a prop­er place to sleep, tonight. Around 8:30 am on Sat­ur­day, a freak storm hit two hous­es in Palmiste Vil­lage along the Ca­paro Val­ley Bras­so Road. High winds tore the roof off one of the struc­tures. The gal­va­nized steel sheets then ripped off near­by tele­phone wires.

Fedel Mara­jah, 47, a me­chan­ic, told Guardian Me­dia the breeze ripped off the roof of the house that is di­vid­ed in­to two apart­ments. Mara­jah said he was ap­peal­ing for as­sis­tance to re­build the roof. He shares the apart­ment with his wife Cindy Sook­lal, 33, and their chil­dren—8-year-old Do­minic, 15-year-old Abi­gail, and 21-year-old Fedel.

The oth­er apart­ment is oc­cu­pied by Ryan Sook­lal, 28, and his com­mon law wife Thel­ma Guev­er­ra, 43, along with her son 14-year-old Josi­ah Ablack, and 57-year-old In­dra Tilka­ran.

Cindy Sook­lal, a food ven­dor, said she was asleep on her bed with her son when she heard a noise and then the rain start­ed wet­ting her.

“We sleep­ing, and we feel that we get­ting wet and we run out,” she told Guardian Me­dia.  “Re­mem­ber you sleep­ing, and you shocked, and you couldn’t grab any­thing… We just run across out­side… We ent get to save noth­ing… every­body in their night­gown." 

At the time she spoke with Guardian Me­dia, Sook­lal and her fam­i­ly had not had any­thing to eat. She said the rain had dam­aged all the fur­ni­ture, ap­pli­ances, school­books and the chil­dren’s com­put­ers. Sook­lal said she had man­aged to sal­vage some cloth­ing and gro­ceries.

She said the roof was so bad­ly dam­aged that she did not know where she would spend the night. Sook­lal said be­cause of the con­di­tion of the over­head wood­en beams, she did not be­lieve that the tar­pau­lins giv­en to them by the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit (DMU) of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/ Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC), would be of any help should a heavy del­uge hit the area. 

Mean­while, Guev­er­ra, who works in a chick­en de­pot, said she was at work when she got the bad news. Gu­ver­ra said all of Josi­ah’s books were dam­aged and she lost all of her clothes and ap­pli­ances.

Ryan Sook­lal, who al­so works in the poul­try in­dus­try, said life had been very dif­fi­cult since the pan­dem­ic and he was not get­ting reg­u­lar work be­cause of the econ­o­my. 

Charles Seer­aj, who lives across the road, lost six roof­ing sheets and was giv­en a tar­pau­lin and a mat­tress from the DMU.

Gopichan Ram­nath, Shawn Red­head, Anis­sa Ram­jag and Wendy Hard­een of the DMU at the CT­TRC re­spond­ed with re­lief items for the dis­tressed res­i­dents. 

Ram­nath said the DMU got the call around 10:30 am and con­tact­ed the dif­fer­ent agen­cies to get the util­i­ties dis­con­nect­ed.  Ram­nath said the DMU was able to pro­vide mat­tress­es and tar­pau­lins and oth­er re­lief items.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, CT­TRC Chair­man Hen­ry Awong urged mem­bers of the pub­lic to in­spect their roofs and con­duct re­pairs.

“We would like per­sons to take a proac­tive ap­proach and re­pair their roofs, change rot­ten beams, in­stall hur­ri­cane straps,” Awong urged. “This can save you from in­cur­ring tremen­dous loss­es.”

The CT­TRC chair­man added: “Peo­ple who can­not af­ford must have ac­cess to funds from the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self Help Lim­it­ed to do pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance. Self Help, too, must get on board and be proac­tive and make them­selves more ac­ces­si­ble to per­sons who can­not af­ford.”