Sascha Wil­son

Flood wa­ters wreaked hav­oc in the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro dis­trict yes­ter­day, af­fect­ing at least 61 house­holds with one house crum­bling af­ter be­ing bat­tered by gusty winds. The wa­ter had sub­sided yes­ter­day morn­ing, but left a trail of dis­as­ter in sev­er­al ar­eas in­clud­ing Plum Mi­tan, Navet, Old Ma­yaro Road, Poole Val­ley, Cushe and Guayagua­yare. Res­i­dents re­port­ed loss of per­son­al items, fur­ni­ture, live­stock and crops. At Guayagua­yare, Clyde Boodram, his wife and two chil­dren were left home­less af­ter gusty winds blew down their wood­en home. For­tu­nate­ly they were not in­jured. Rio Claro/Ma­yaro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Chair­man Ram­lochan Pan­choo said this was the worst flood­ing they had seen in years.

He said ar­eas which were not prone to flood­ing pre­vi­ous­ly, were af­fect­ed. He said they went out on the field try­ing to bring re­lief to af­fect­ed res­i­dents. Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment co-or­di­na­tor at the cor­po­ra­tion, Ains­ley Ho­sein, said the flood wa­ter rose to ten feet in some ar­eas. "With lim­it­ed re­sources we have we are try­ing to give out some mat­tress­es in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the fire ser­vice. The So­cial de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cials came out and are do­ing their as­sess­ments. Res­i­dents al­so need food ham­pers," he said. He said when the wa­ter lev­el goes down they would be spray­ing the area with chem­i­cals and clean­ing cesspit tanks.