OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

A dra­mat­ic res­cue un­fold­ed in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, as a 57-year-old home­less man clung to a rope above the rain-swollen wa­ters of the East Dry Riv­er, nar­row­ly avoid­ing be­ing swept away be­fore he was res­cued.

On­look­ers watched in hor­ror dur­ing the in­ci­dent, fear­ing sev­er­al times that he was mo­ments from cer­tain death.

The or­deal be­gan around 1.20 pm when a passer­by spot­ted the man hang­ing des­per­ate­ly above the surg­ing cur­rent near River­side Plaza. The wit­ness im­me­di­ate­ly called po­lice, re­port­ing that some­one was in im­mi­nent dan­ger of drown­ing in the flood­wa­ters.

Fire­fight­ers from the Wright­son Road Fire Sta­tion and po­lice from the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion re­spond­ed to the scene. There, they found the man—lat­er iden­ti­fied by po­lice as An­der­son Mark—cling­ing to a rope, strug­gling to stay above the tor­rent.

Po­lice said Mark had en­tered the riv­er to use it as a wash­room when the flood­wa­ters sud­den­ly surged. For­tu­nate­ly, mem­bers of the San­ta Cruz Fire Sta­tion’s Search and Res­cue Unit were near­by in the cap­i­tal city and quick­ly joined the res­cue op­er­a­tion.

Ini­tial at­tempts to get to the area were hin­dered by poor ac­cess, de­lay­ing the res­cue ef­forts. How­ev­er, the com­bined teams man­aged to reach Mark and pull him to safe­ty.

He suf­fered mi­nor bruis­es and ap­peared dis­ori­ent­ed but was con­scious and able to speak.

“I feel­ing good,” he told re­porters be­fore be­ing placed in a wait­ing am­bu­lance and tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for fur­ther as­sess­ment.

With con­tin­u­ous rain­fall rais­ing the risk of flash flood­ing, emer­gency of­fi­cials are ap­peal­ing, es­pe­cial­ly to vul­ner­a­ble groups like the home­less, not to en­ter wa­ter­ways or dry riverbeds un­der any cir­cum­stances.

Emer­gency of­fi­cials are al­so urg­ing the pub­lic to steer clear of rivers, drains, and canals dur­ing heavy rain­fall, cit­ing the near-tragedy as a sober­ing re­minder of how quick­ly con­di­tions can turn dead­ly.

Fire of­fi­cers are al­so call­ing on both pub­lic and pri­vate prop­er­ty man­agers to keep emer­gency ac­cess routes clear, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the rainy sea­son when such in­ci­dents are more like­ly.