RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Floods as high as 10 feet are keep­ing out dis­as­ter crews from the Mafek­ing area.

Calls are now be­ing made for the T&T Coast Guard and the De­fence Force to come in with boats and heavy-du­ty trucks to move emer­gency per­son­nel.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, res­i­dent Don­ald Sam­pat said it was the worst flood ever seen in the his­to­ry of the vil­lage.

"Both my par­ents and my broth­er's homes are af­fect­ed. We tried to put every­thing on high­er ground but the wa­ters still came in," he said. Most res­i­dents are un­able to count their loss­es un­til the floods re­cede.

At Charu­ma, Biche and Navet, the flood wa­ters broke through walls and top­pled elec­tri­cal lines. Trees fell and live­stock washed away.

MP for Ma­yaro Rush­ton Paray told Guardian Me­dia that In­ner and Out­er Mafek­ing were the worst hit ar­eas and ur­gent as­sis­tance was need­ed from the T&T Coast Guard and the De­fence Force.

Paray re­vealed that the top floors of peo­ple's homes were cov­ered with floods and res­cue teams from the Cor­po­ra­tion's Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit were forced to stand down on Tues­day morn­ing, be­cause of the height of the wa­ter.

He said boats and army trucks were need­ed ur­gent­ly to bring out se­cu­ri­ty and med­ical per­son­nel from the flood­ed com­mu­ni­ties.

"The Mafek­ing area is to­tal­ly in­un­dat­ed and every com­mu­ni­ty that sits along the riv­er is un­der five to six feet of wa­ter. On the Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road where we were able to get some trucks tra­vers­ing to move per­son­nel yes­ter­day, is as of this morn­ing, un­able to pass as the wa­ter is so high that Cor­po­ra­tion trucks have had to stand down," he said.

He added: "Right now we re­quest­ed through DMU to get the army trucks. We have med­ical and se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel to be moved. T&TEC work­ers need to get to the T&TEC sub­sta­tions to fix ar­eas where elec­tri­cal poles are lean­ing."

Paray said dial­y­sis pa­tients have not re­ceived any dial­y­sis for three days and some need­ed to be moved im­me­di­ate­ly from Ma­yaro to Rio Claro. 

"We need sup­port from the army now. The Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit per­son­nel are try­ing their best but since the trucks got stuck, we can­not dis­trib­ute wa­ter or food," Paray re­vealed.

He added: " We are do­ing our best with the re­sources we have. We are try­ing to get the Coast Guard which has a sta­tion near­by to lend some sup­port. Some ar­eas have been cut off for three days."

He said that his­tor­i­cal­ly there are four flood zones in Ma­yaro. 

"Rio Claro North and South would usu­al­ly flood first and when it re­cedes the floods come to Ma­yaro. This time all four zones were flood­ed at the same time," he ex­plained.

He not­ed that the ex­ces­sive rain­fall, ad­hoc de­vel­op­ment and the nar­row­ing of wa­ter­cours­es all con­tributed to the un­usu­al­ly high floods.