KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Yes­ter­day af­ter­noon fin­ished bright­ly with hot and sun­ny con­di­tions in most parts of south Trinidad, a stark con­trast to yes­ter­day morn­ing when bat­ter­ing rain­fall brought floods to sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties.

From 6 am, res­i­dents woke up to rain clat­ter­ing on their roofs and the sight of drains spilling over in La Ro­main, San Fran­cique, Pe­nal, Debe and Moru­ga.

While there was most­ly street flood­ing, sev­er­al res­i­dents in Low­er Bar­rack­pore suf­fered dam­age when flood­wa­ters gushed in­to their homes.

Mon­day was a tragedy for Cheryl-ann Ti­tus’ fam­i­ly as her sis­ter-in-law died.

As they pre­pared for wake yes­ter­day, not on­ly did the four feet of wa­ter rush­ing in­to their home in Low­er Bar­rack­pore de­stroy their food sup­plies, it plunged them in­to ex­pense. The flood dam­aged mu­si­cal equip­ment, beds, freez­er and sup­plies for the wake. 

“Well, it was a flood sit­u­a­tion. My sis­ter-in-law passed away on Mon­day, and we are keep­ing “wake” at the mo­ment un­til her kids ar­rive from An­guil­la, and we are to­tal­ly flood­ed out. We do not know what we will do to­day. Just Mon­day, we washed down the area, and it is just mud and slush all over again,” Ti­tus said.

She said no lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty and wants the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to send CEPEP work­ers to as­sist them with flood cleanup. Ti­tus said she did not vote be­cause her fam­i­ly has suf­fered flood­ing for years with no sight of help.

“Every­body promis­es to help, but they do not turn up.”

Ti­tus’ sis­ter-in-law died on Mon­day, so no one else in the fam­i­ly got a chance to vote.

In the Pe­nal/Debe mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty, there were floods along the Pe­nal Rock Road, mak­ing it im­pass­able in some parts.

There was street flood­ing in Good­man Trace, Pic­ton Es­tate Road, Char­lo Vil­lage, Lowkie Trace, Clarke Road. Seg­ments of the SS Erin Road be­tween Debe and Pe­nal al­so flood­ed.

Homes were flood­ed along Rochard Road and Pa­pourie Road, Bar­racpoke.

As the wa­ter sub­sided from the east­ern parts of the re­gion around mid­day, the drains start­ed to spill over in Debe near the end of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion.

Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PDRC) chair­man Dr Allen Sam­my said the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty most­ly suf­fered street flood­ing in the morn­ing as the rains co­in­cid­ed with high tide.

How­ev­er, he said by mid­day, the flood­ing sub­sided, and riv­er lev­els re­turned to nor­mal.

He said the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit at­tached to the PDRC would as­sess the com­mu­ni­ties and is­sue tar­pau­lins, mat­tress­es and food sup­plies where peo­ple need help.

He urged those re­quir­ing flood as­sis­tance to con­tact the hot­line: 800-PDRC.