KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

More than 60 hours af­ter tor­ren­tial rains dev­as­tat­ed parts of South Trinidad with se­vere flood­ing, res­i­dents of Pe­nal and Wood­land are still plead­ing for help.

Some say they are go­ing hun­gry, have no wa­ter to clean and are un­able to work and many say they have yet to get help from the au­thor­i­ties.

As of 6 pm yes­ter­day, Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj re­port­ed that flood­wa­ters con­tin­ued to rise in Clarke Road and Su­chit Trace, Pe­nal, even as wa­ter lev­els be­gan to re­cede in oth­er ar­eas. While much of the flood­wa­ter had drained from Pe­nal Rock Road, Good­man Trace, and Na­gas­sar Trace, an­oth­er riv­er course through the Pe­nal com­mu­ni­ty breached its banks on Wednes­day evening. This over­flow brought fresh floods to Clarke Road, Ramd­har­ry Trace, Naipalia Trace, and sur­round­ing ar­eas, mak­ing these roads im­pass­able for small ve­hi­cles. Some res­i­dents re­mained trapped in their homes in San Fran­cique. Al­though flood­wa­ters be­gan to re­cede on Wednes­day, progress stalled yes­ter­day.

Among those strand­ed were re­tired cane cut­ter Ka­mal Roopan and his wife, Sama­daye Sookdeo, both 67, who have been un­able to ac­cess food or cook­ing sup­plies.

“We have noth­ing,” Roopan said. “I’m not work­ing, and I need to take my med­ica­tion. My wife al­so needs med­ica­tion. I sell co­conuts to the neigh­bours here, but right now, it is just very dif­fi­cult.”

For peo­ple in eco­nom­i­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble sit­u­a­tions, cop­ing with the floods was even more chal­leng­ing. Sookdeo, who suf­fers from a foot in­jury, and Roopan, a brain can­cer sur­vivor man­ag­ing oth­er health is­sues, point­ed out that they could not even ac­cess crops from their gar­den, which was sub­merged in wa­ter. They re­called how, ear­ly Tues­day, flood­wa­ters be­gan rush­ing in­to their home, ris­ing to near­ly three feet. They have been un­able to clean be­cause there is no pipe-borne wa­ter in the area.

Roopan ex­plained that the river­banks over­flowed due to an in­flux of wa­ter from as far away as Bar­rack­pore. With his bed, couch, and oth­er fur­ni­ture soaked, he re­sort­ed to putting his wet mat­tress on the floor to sleep.

A few hous­es away, Raj Ram­lal con­tin­ued sweep­ing wa­ter and mud out of his fa­ther’s home, where the yard re­mained un­der two feet of foul-smelling flood­wa­ter. Ram­lal, 52, said flood­ing hap­pens so fre­quent­ly that he can­not sleep sound­ly dur­ing heavy rain. Awake at 3 am on Tues­day, he said he watched as wa­ter poured in­to the house and man­aged to el­e­vate fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances on coun­ters and con­crete blocks. How­ev­er, he has bare­ly slept since then. With in­suf­fi­cient drainage main­te­nance in the area, he ex­pects to re­place flood-dam­aged items every year.

“Every year, it is the same prob­lem. We face loss­es, and there is no com­pen­sa­tion. Peo­ple work hard for a bit of com­fort and lux­u­ries in life,” Ram­lal said.

With no taxis able to nav­i­gate Pluck Road, Vee­da Khadou bor­rowed a bi­cy­cle to ride 2.5 kilo­me­tres in the pre-dawn hours to reach his job at Wood­land Hin­du Pri­ma­ry School.

“I had to find a place to bathe and get my­self ready,” Khadou said.

He ex­plained that, for now, res­i­dents pur­chased what they could from near­by shops. Peo­ple even wad­ed through the flood­wa­ters with­out hes­i­ta­tion, seem­ing­ly ac­cept­ing flood­ing as part of life there. Khadou be­lieves dredg­ing the rivers deep­er could in­crease their ca­pac­i­ty and pre­vent fu­ture floods.

While res­i­dents in Wood­land and San Fran­cique wait­ed for flood­wa­ters to re­cede to as­sess their loss­es, peo­ple in Pe­nal have al­ready be­gun count­ing thou­sands of dol­lars in dam­age. Bars, gro­ceries, and food ven­dors were all reel­ing. One su­per­mar­ket own­er, who op­er­ates along Pe­nal Rock Road, re­port­ed a loss of $20,000 in goods on low­er shelves due to flood­wa­ter. Near­by, Anil Boodoo, own­er of Lucky’s Uni­sex Sa­lon, es­ti­mat­ed $10,000 in dam­age, in­clud­ing soaked cab­i­nets, couch­es, car­pets, and a re­frig­er­a­tor. He lost three days of busi­ness and does not ex­pect to re­open un­til to­mor­row.

He said flood­wa­ters rose near­ly two feet in­side. The sand­bags proved in­suf­fi­cient, as trucks dri­ving by cre­at­ed waves that pushed down his door. Boodoo de­scribed this flood as the worst yet and blamed poor drainage as the main cause.

Mean­while, Ann Na­gas­sar put on her gar­den boots to clear lilies clog­ging a cul­vert near her home on Clarke Road. Sur­round­ed by murky flood­wa­ter she and her fam­i­ly have been un­able to work since Tues­day. Al­though their em­ploy­ers un­der­stand their sit­u­a­tion, miss­ing work means they al­so miss out on their dai­ly wages. Na­gas­sar al­so blamed in­ad­e­quate drainage for the wors­en­ing floods.

“No­body can leave,” Na­gas­sar said, adding that it would take at least a week to clean up once the wa­ter sub­sides.

Mean­while, res­i­dents of St John’s Branch Trace ma­rooned since a bridge col­lapsed in June, re­mained cut off due to flood­ed roads.

Cor­po­ra­tions step up

with meal sup­port

Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo said around 5.45 pm yes­ter­day the wa­ter in San Fran­cique was grad­u­al­ly re­ced­ing. He, along with staff from the Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion (SBC), had been dis­trib­ut­ing meals to res­i­dents of San Fran­cique and Av­o­cat, sup­port­ed by a do­na­tion of 150 meals from KFC. He said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 230 peo­ple had been di­rect­ly im­pact­ed by the flood­ing.

The SBC al­so planned to hand out clean­ing sup­plies to res­i­dents to­mor­row. Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi and Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan for com­ments on the dev­as­ta­tion and are await­ing their replies.