In­nis Fran­cis

Free­lance Writer

in­nis_fran­cis@ya­hoo.com

Af­ter five hours of non­stop rain­fall on Sat­ur­day, sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties around San Fer­nan­do were se­vere­ly hit by flood­wa­ters that left dis­tressed fam­i­lies count­ing their loss­es yes­ter­day.

Apart from street flood­ing, wa­ter en­tered the homes of many, over­turn­ing house­hold fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances.

Res­i­dents of Richard Street, Dasent Street, Scott Street, and Don­ald­son Street in San Fer­nan­do, said it was the first time they were af­fect­ed by flood­ing of this mag­ni­tude af­ter the Cipero Riv­er broke its banks. Res­i­dents said they suf­fered loss­es be­tween $100,000 to $70,000.

They said the ma­jor cause of the flood was a re­sult of a near­by busi­ness that cov­ered a por­tion of land re­serves with con­crete, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for em­ploy­ees of the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion to clean drains and rivers.

They said they lodged sev­er­al com­plaints with the cor­po­ra­tion but the mat­ter was not dealt with.

San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo and Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi toured some parts of the area ac­cess­ing the prob­lems of flood vic­tims.

Al-Rawi said they had all hands on deck to help with the clean-up op­er­a­tions—there were rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit, 250 Cepep work­ers, and City Cor­po­ra­tion work­ers.

Al-Rawi and in­cum­bent PNM lo­cal gov­ern­ment can­di­date for the area Sa­di Mo­hammed used the un­planned walk­a­bout to tell the af­fect­ed res­i­dents about the im­por­tance of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form.

But at Palmiste Bend, Co­conut Dri­ve, San Fer­nan­do, Cur­tis Ralph, who said there were eight peo­ple in his home suf­fer­ing as a re­sult of the flood, was not con­cerned about re­form then.

He told Al-Rawi, “While we dis­cussing pol­i­tics, my chil­dren, all their shoes were down­stairs, shoes, slip­pers you name it ... My TV, wash­ing ma­chine, couch set, all that was de­stroyed. While we dis­cussing pol­i­tics, I have to deal with the im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion of that.”

Al-Rawi re­spond­ed, “Well, first things first, we have peo­ple on the ground. Sec­ond thing, we have So­cial De­vel­op­ment to list all of the dam­age. The third thing is all part of why we are ask­ing for sup­port for this gen­tle­man here (point­ing to Saied Mo­hammed).

“Now the cor­po­ra­tion gets to do that. I don’t have to wait for Port-of-Spain to get the mes­sage down to Rio Claro to go to Char­lot­teville to come back to do it. It have a few peo­ple in the way of that, they are wear­ing blue jer­seys on the out­side.

“A la­dy name Lutch­me­di­al! Ask her why they don’t sup­port it. So that is what I am fight­ing for right now. Oth­er­wise, we would be hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion six years from now and you go­ing to show me the same things and say this didn’t hap­pen and this didn’t hap­pen.

“So the ques­tion is what is the so­lu­tion? I know it is a dis­tress­ing time,” Al-Rawi added.

“That long-term fix can on­ly come if you have a plan you could put in­to ac­tion. My plan is, give me the au­thor­i­ty to do it.”

Al-Rawi said 100 homes were af­fect­ed by the flood.

 Re­grel­lo said they had been out since 6 am in the af­fect­ed ar­eas. He said the ma­jor prob­lem af­fect­ing the city was peo­ple us­ing the road re­serve to ex­tend their prop­er­ty. He said it pre­vents the cor­po­ra­tion from hav­ing ac­cess to clean the riv­er and the mouth of the riv­er.

The may­or plead­ed, “I am mak­ing a spe­cial ap­peal, do not oc­cu­py or do any plant­i­ng or make it a leisure park for your home.”

He said the cor­po­ra­tion be­gan a clean-up cam­paign and bulk waste pick-up two weeks ago.

Res­i­dents’ woes

Res­i­dent Har­ri­son Thomp­son, 78, of Don­ald­son Street, said wa­ter en­tered his home quick­ly and he had to flee with his wife and sis­ter An­tonette Thomp­son to safe grounds. He said as the wa­ter sub­sided he re­turned and cleaned up un­til 11.30 pm. Thomp­son said he was alert­ed that his four-foot wall at the back of his home had col­lapsed and knocked down the neigh­bour, Win­ston At­tong’s wall on Dasent Street.

“What wor­ried me was the pow­er of the wa­ter, it was run­ning like a lake. It was phe­nom­e­nal. If this hap­pens again, I don’t know … you see every­one builds a wall, the wa­ter­course is in­ter­rupt­ed by walls and the wa­ter gets trapped, so it makes its own way.”

Win­ston At­tong, a for­mer Olympic cy­clist of T&T, said he lived at Dasent Street for 23 years and has been hop­ing to have the prob­lem with flood­ing there re­solved.

He said he would like to get re­lief but has “no hope and trust” in the au­thor­i­ties. At­tong said, “Too many promis­es and none is be­ing de­liv­ered. I want to get back my re­frig­er­a­tor, wash­er and dry­er, deep freeze, elec­tri­cal, and fur­ni­ture. This is about $90,000 in dam­age to my apart­ment alone. Plus I lost four birds in the flood.”

At Don­ald­son Street, re­tiree Knol­ly Dorner, 85, lived with his wife, Zo­la, 64, an am­putee, and daugh­ter Shan­del. The pen­sion­er said his wife had to be res­cued by fire of­fi­cers and tak­en to their land­lord Bri­an Bere­ton’s up­stairs apart­ment as the wa­ter rose.

Sit­ting on a chair and clutch­ing a walk­ing cane, Dorner said he was promised a home at Union Hall but that nev­er ma­te­ri­alised. He point­ed to all his house­hold items in the front yard that was soaked.

“I have been liv­ing here for one year, some­one promised me a home be­cause I have nowhere to go and no one con­firmed it with me.”

At Palmiste Bend, Co­conut Dri­ve, San Fer­nan­do, Joy Ralph and her broth­er Cur­tis were fu­ri­ous at the turn of events. Ralph said she was forced to “bunk” on a couch when wa­ter burst the near­by Cipero Riv­er banks. She said it was the first time res­i­dents were trapped in their homes as a re­sult of flood­ing.

She said they had plead­ed with the City Cor­po­ra­tion for both sides of the riv­er bank to be raised equal­ly and for it to be fre­quent­ly cleared of de­bris.

“The last time they clean the riv­er was two years ago, and when they clean they reach a cer­tain part and dump the rest next to our home. Peo­ple need big­ger things than promis­es, and a meal, and wash­ing de­ter­gents. I am grate­ful to Rishi (Bal­ram­s­ingh) for the as­sis­tance he had giv­en peo­ple here in the past and con­tin­ues to do,” Ralph said.

Mean­while, the in­cum­bent can­di­date for Les Ef­forts East/Cipero Rishi Bal­ram­s­ingh was out dis­trib­ut­ing meals, drink­ing wa­ter, and sani­tis­ers to the af­fect­ed res­i­dents.

Bal­ram­s­ingh said, “To­mor­row (to­day) from my as­sess­ments, I would promise to re­place some of the items with the help of friends and fam­i­ly; to those who iden­ti­fied their needs; es­pe­cial­ly chil­dren who lost their school uni­forms and books.”

Mean­while, the San Fer­nan­do Na­pari­ma Bowl had to can­cel a show be­cause it was cov­ered in flood­wa­ter, but the wa­ter sub­sided ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.  

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Mar­lon De Bique said re­cent up­grades and de­vel­op­ment did not spare them the dis­as­ter.

De Bique said, “There was a show sched­uled for 7.30 pm but with the weath­er for ob­vi­ous rea­sons the area to ac­cess­ing the Bowl was a chal­lenge and our prop­er­ty was com­pro­mised with the flood­ing.

“It was a safe­ty and health haz­ard, we had a steel­pan con­cert. Pana­son­ic Steel Ex­pres­sion, a con­cert called World Mu­sic. This was the first time at this lev­el. We do our up­grade to the drainage. Where we are lo­cat­ed, in a val­ley, we have the PSA grounds, Na­pari­ma Col­lege, and Hos­pi­tal, and every­thing con­verges down­hill.”