Sascha Wil­son

As the body of flood vic­tim An­tho­ny Walkes was re­trieved from a riv­er in Williamsville yes­ter­day, there were calls for the wa­ter­ways to be dredged and cleaned.

Walkes, 49, of New Grant, was walk­ing through flood­wa­ters in Hard­bar­gain around 2.30 pm on Mon­day when the force of the cur­rent caused him to fall near a bridge. He was then swept in­to the rag­ing riv­er where he dis­ap­peared. Walkes was on his way home af­ter vis­it­ing a friend.

Re­call­ing how he tried to save Walkes when some­one shout­ed that he was drown­ing, res­i­dent Matthew Jeet-Mewalal said he ran to the bridge but did not see him. He then still jumped in­to the neck-high wa­ter hop­ing that he could save him.

When the cur­rent start­ed pulling him fur­ther in­to the wa­ter, how­ev­er, he had to save him­self.

“To be hon­est with you the cur­rent was re­al­ly strong, I my­self would ah go down with the cur­rent. I grab on to a dry bam­boo and the bam­boo pull me in­stead but the bam­boo was not good and I had to grab a next one and then climb up the pom­me­cythere tree and come out but I could ah go down too.”

When the floods sub­sided on Tues­day, the Of­fice of the Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), the Fire Ser­vice and mem­bers of De­fence Force searched the riv­er in the Halls Trace area.

Matthew Jeet-Mewalal, who risked his life and went into the raging floodwater on Monday to try to assist Anthony Walkes, speaks to police officers where Walkes body was found yesterday.

Rishi Ragoonath

The search, how­ev­er, was called off at 4 pm. Mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers of the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion joined the search around 9 am yes­ter­day.

Sgt St Louis-Jones said the body was found ten min­utes lat­er, sub­merged in the wa­ter near the bank.

She warned peo­ple to avoid walk­ing or swim­ming in flood­wa­ters. “Stay away from the flood­wa­ters. Don’t think that it is okay and you could prob­a­bly swim or make it through the wa­ters be­cause the wa­ters are very dan­ger­ous so stay away from the wa­ters.”

Blam­ing the floods on the clogged riv­er, Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine was hope­ful that Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan in­structs that the riv­er be dredged.

“I re­al­ly hope the Min­is­ter of Works sees this and un­der­stand how ur­gent this is be­cause a life was lost. It is a sad sit­u­a­tion. It is sad for the fam­i­ly and at this time we are li­ais­ing with Dass Fu­ner­al Home who is will­ing to as­sist to do the fu­ner­al free of charge for the fam­i­ly.”

He said Mon­day’s flood­ing which al­so left sev­er­al fam­i­lies ma­rooned was as a re­sult of the clogged riv­er.

He said there is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that the cor­po­ra­tion is re­spon­si­ble for clean­ing the rivers, but that falls un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Min­istry’s Drainage Di­vi­sion.

Fire Officers recovered the body of Anthony Walkes, from the Guaracara River in Hardbagain yesterday. Anthony Walkes was swept away by raging floodwaters on Monday.

Rishi Ragoonath

“The main rea­son for this flood­ing is this riv­er was dredged in 2010 and af­ter that, it was not dredged af­ter that. This riv­er is a ma­jor riv­er con­nect­ing in­to the Guaracara riv­er so the flood in the Hard Bar­gain area that we nor­mal­ly get if we get prop­er dredg­ing in this area it will solve the prob­lem.

Res­i­dent Ren­nie Maraj al­so com­plained about the state of the riv­er.

“High­er au­thor­i­ties have to get in­volved be­cause we get­ting too much of flood­ing...The dredg­ing is not the on­ly part of the prob­lem, peo­ple dump­ing and we need some as­sis­tance.”

Mean­while, Walkes’ sis­ter Mer­lyn said she cried all night in­to yes­ter­day. “Is on­ly when I hear they find my broth­er then I feel a lit­tle re­lease but I miss­ing my broth­er too.”

She was not sur­prised that he was found in the area as she had a feel­ing that his body was close by.