An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­nal­isa.paul@guardian.co.tt

As the pub­lic con­tin­ued to brace for more rain yes­ter­day, clean-up op­er­a­tions were be­ing car­ried out in sev­er­al ar­eas across Trinidad.

De­spite the light rains, work­ers of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port Drainage and High­ways Di­vi­sion as well as the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion were not de­terred as they re­moved de­bris and washed mud­dy road­ways.

Along Sad­dle Road, Mar­aval yes­ter­day, sev­er­al teams were hard at work shov­el­ling grass, mud, slush, fall­en trees and bam­boo, and re­mov­ing garbage from wa­ter­ways as they sought to en­sure they are clear as the rainy sea­son con­tin­ues.

At the Roy­al Palm Ho­tel, Mar­aval, em­ploy­ees were seen pow­er wash­ing the premis­es, while much of the same con­tin­ued at the near­by Sher­win Williams out­let.

And emer­gency re­pairs al­so con­tin­ued at the Trou Macaque Plan­nings, Laven­tille, where the roof of an apart­ment com­plex was ripped off by strong winds on Tues­day.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area, em­ploy­ees of the build­ing site next door were hard at work nail­ing down gal­vanised sheet­ing and as­sist­ing with the re­moval of wa­ter-logged fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances.

Stand­ing in his wa­ter-soaked apart­ment which re­mained in a state of chaos yes­ter­day, af­fect­ed ten­ant Shel­don Charles said he was try­ing hard not to think about the loss­es he had sus­tained in terms of dam­aged ap­pli­ances and fur­ni­ture.

Hav­ing lived at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion com­plex for the past 21 years, he said the loss­es were more sen­ti­men­tal.

“It rep­re­sent­ed things I ac­com­plished over the years as I got every­thing piece by piece ... it was hard,” he said.

In­di­cat­ing they were poor but hard-work­ing peo­ple, Charles said fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion would help to re­place lost items but it could not re­turn the mem­o­ries and sen­ti­men­tal val­ue that had now been washed away.

He called on the HDC to act faster to ef­fect re­pairs at the de­vel­op­ment as he be­lieved neg­li­gence had con­tributed great­ly to Tues­day’s in­ci­dent.

Charles urged the au­thor­i­ties not to judge where re­pairs were car­ried out first or faster due to the stig­ma of be­ing “a gang­ster or high-risk neigh­bour­hood,” but to con­sid­er that those liv­ing in all ar­eas were hu­man be­ings.

He said, “Yes, we live in the ghet­to but we are hu­man be­ings al­so.” He re­vealed that he had com­plained to the HDC about car­ry­ing out re­pairs on his unit sev­er­al times be­fore.

This was echoed by an­oth­er af­fect­ed res­i­dent, Eme­line Hard­en, who said she too had lodged sev­er­al com­plaints with the HDC to car­ry out re­pairs to the build­ing’s roof.

Ask­ing to be re­lo­cat­ed now, the tear­ful woman re­called how the ceil­ing fell on her grand­daugh­ter who had been ly­ing on the bed.

Ini­tial­ly trapped in the apart­ment, which is with­out a fire es­cape, she said af­ter the beams of the roof col­lapsed in front of the lone ac­cess door­way her neigh­bour helped them to get out as he pushed the de­bris out of the way.

And on Green Acres Road, Trou Macaque Ex­ten­sion, Laven­tille, Dian­drea Roberts, 37, re­count­ed how ter­ri­fy­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence had been as their roof was peeled back and crushed with­in min­utes by the gusty winds.

Hav­ing re­turned home around noon on Tues­day, she said, “I heard the rat­tle and said nah, steel roof doesn’t blow off, so I didn’t even re­al­ly con­sid­er it. But by the time I blinked again...it peeled from the back straight for­ward. I was in a daze and then pan­icked ... like what to do. I ran out­side, then ran back in­side to fin­ish chang­ing, grabbed the phone and then re­alised the phone con­nec­tion pulled up too, so I couldn’t di­al any­one.”

Brav­ing the light­ning and heavy rain, Roberts said she sought safe­ty at her neigh­bour’s house while she alert­ed her fam­i­ly.

Three peo­ple were ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed, in­clud­ing Roberts, her hus­band and her 21-year-old nephew.

Roberts said while she had spent Tues­day night at her in-laws’ home, they would con­tin­ue to clean and re­pair their home which is more than 40 years old.

For­mer coun­cil­lor and in­cum­bent can­di­date for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) for the con­stituen­cy of Trou Macaque, Adan­na Grif­fith-Gor­don said 15 roofs were blown off in the Suc­cess, Trou Macaque area, while a to­tal of 60 roofs were re­port­ed­ly dam­aged in the San Juan Laven­tille re­gion, along with 23 fall­en trees.

She said while the emer­gency shel­ter was of­fered to af­fect­ed res­i­dents from the Trou Macaque Plan­nings since Tues­day, “The com­mu­ni­ty reached out to them and would have of­fered shel­ter.”

Promis­ing not to stop un­til the last roof was re­placed, the hope­ful can­di­date said im­me­di­ate as­sis­tance in­clud­ed cov­er­ing af­fect­ed homes with tar­pau­lins as as­sess­ments were con­tin­u­ing.

How­ev­er, she said build­ing/roof­ing sup­plies were ur­gent­ly need­ed.