RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Fif­teen peo­ple in ur­gent need of dial­y­sis could not get out of their homes for treat­ment af­ter the Or­toire Riv­er burst its banks, flood­ing Ma­yaro vil­lages in what the MP Rush­ton Paray es­ti­mat­ed to be ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 feet of wa­ter.

It is the first time in the his­to­ry of the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty that wa­ter has risen to such lev­els in the in­ner Mafek­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

Emer­gency re­sponse crews from the T&T Reg­i­ment and the Coast Guard were kept busy shut­tling es­sen­tial ser­vice work­ers in and out of the flood­ed zones.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day, res­i­dent Don­ald Sam­pat said it was the worst flood­ing he had ever seen.

“Both my par­ents and my broth­er’s homes are af­fect­ed. We tried to put every­thing on high­er ground but the wa­ters still came in,” he said.

Most res­i­dents will be un­able to count their loss­es un­til the floods re­cede.

At Charu­ma, Biche and Navet, the flood­wa­ters broke through walls and top­pled elec­tri­cal lines, felled trees and washed live­stock away.

Paray told Guardian Me­dia that in­ner and out­er Mafek­ing were the worst hit ar­eas and the wa­ter rose to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 feet to 12 feet in some ar­eas.

“The top floors of peo­ple’s homes were cov­ered with floods and res­cue teams from the cor­po­ra­tion’s Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit were forced to stand down on Tues­day morn­ing be­cause of the height of the wa­ter,” Paray said.

Ear­li­er in the day, he called for boats and army trucks to bring out se­cu­ri­ty and med­ical per­son­nel from the flood­ed com­mu­ni­ties.

“The Mafek­ing area is to­tal­ly in­un­dat­ed and every com­mu­ni­ty that sits along the riv­er is un­der five to six feet of wa­ter. The Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road, where we were able to get some trucks tra­vers­ing to move per­son­nel yes­ter­day, is, as of this morn­ing, un­able to pass as the wa­ter is so high that cor­po­ra­tion trucks have had to stand down,” he said.

He added: “Right now, we re­quest­ed through DMU to get the army trucks. We have med­ical and se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel to be moved. T&TEC work­ers need to get to the T&TEC sub­sta­tions to fix ar­eas where elec­tri­cal poles are lean­ing.”

Paray said dial­y­sis pa­tients had not re­ceived dial­y­sis for three days and 15 peo­ple need­ed to be moved im­me­di­ate­ly from Ma­yaro to the Rio Claro Dial­y­sis Cen­tre.

“We need sup­port from the army now. The Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit per­son­nel are try­ing their best but since the trucks got stuck we can­not dis­trib­ute wa­ter or food,” Paray re­vealed.

By mid­day, the Coast Guard and sol­diers be­gan mov­ing in, ren­der­ing as­sis­tance.

Ex­plain­ing the cause of the floods, Paray said his­tor­i­cal­ly, there are four flood zones in Ma­yaro.

“Rio Claro North and South would usu­al­ly flood first and when it re­cedes the floods come to Ma­yaro. This time, all four zones were flood­ed at the same time,” he ex­plained.

He not­ed that the ex­ces­sive rain­fall, ad hoc de­vel­op­ment and the nar­row­ing of wa­ter­cours­es all con­tributed to the un­usu­al­ly high floods.

Arrange­ments have since been made to trans­port 15 of the dial­y­sis pa­tients to the cen­tre to­day.