SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Ca­r­ole Moller's brav­ery was put to the test as she faced the en­croach­ing flood­wa­ters that threat­ened to desto­ry her Man­zanil­la home and even take her life in No­vem­ber.

The 80-year-old pen­sion­er had suf­fered a sim­i­lar fate in 2014 due to sim­i­lar flood­ing, but this lat­est in­ci­dent was even more ter­ri­fy­ing.

When the rains came a few weeks ago and washed away every­thing in its path, in­clud­ing the Man­zanil­la-Ma­yaro Road, and all res­i­dents were forced to flee, the el­der­ly woman stood firm, de­ter­mined not to aban­don her two prop­er­ties or the an­i­mals she cared for. She was un­daunt­ed by the ris­ing flood­wa­ters, which were six feet deep around the perime­ter of her both homes.

Not even the plead­ings of her broth­er, res­i­dents along the Man­zanil­la stretch, and of­fi­cials from the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion who braved the in­clement weath­er in an at­tempt to res­cue her could make her change her mind; she was res­olute.

Her re­fusal to leave her home was high­light­ed in a CNC3 news re­port in No­vem­ber where her broth­er Gar­net Moller made an im­pas­sioned plea for his age­ing sis­ter to leave the premis­es and stay at his home.

Floodwaters destroyed part of Carole Moller's property in Manzanilla.

Shaliza Hassanali

"I couldn't leave my home and an­i­mals. I kept study­ing them. This is all that I have. This is where I live. I worked hard to build this house. I didn't have any­where else to go. Tak­ing every­thing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion I just didn't want to leave," Moller said, ex­plain­ing her rea­sons for not mov­ing dur­ing her most dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od.

"I couldn't go in one day and re­set­tle by my broth­er. I just couldn't do that. I have my an­i­mals here...my dog­gies, cats, chick­ies and duck­ies. I couldn't leave them like that."

Moller, a moth­er of nine, said that she did not want to stay with her chil­dren be­cause her home is her cas­tle and com­fort.

"You don't feel com­fort­able stay­ing by peo­ple."

A few Good Samar­i­tans in the com­mu­ni­ty wad­ed through waist-high wa­ter to de­liv­er food to the pen­sion­er the fol­low­ing days. The men tied lengths of rope to trees and used them to nav­i­gate safe­ly through the wa­ter to Moller's home.

Moller watched with dread as sec­tions of the 26-kilo­me­tre-long road­way caved in dur­ing last month's floods caused by per­sis­tent and pro­longed rain­fall.

The de­struc­tion left the el­der­ly woman pained.

"Oh yes, I was get­ting scared at one point. I mean any­body would get scared see­ing that amount of wa­ter. It was like a sea. To me, it was a great dis­as­ter. A sad sit­u­a­tion for me, es­pe­cial­ly, hav­ing to go through that at this stage in my life. It has just been one thing af­ter the oth­er."

Moller said she tried to pre­pare for the bad weath­er but to no avail.

"When I see the heavy rains com­ing I called the ODPM (Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment) for 200 sand­bags."

At that time, she said, the ODPM of­fered to give her three bags to se­cure her prop­er­ties.

"If I did re­al­ly get those bags on time my place would not be in the state it is to­day."

She be­lieves if the road did not cave in, her prop­er­ty would not have been af­fect­ed.

"If the road did not break down I would have been fine. The road col­lapsed, and it caused my prop­er­ty to be like this," she claimed.

The rag­ing wa­ter up­root­ed the en­tire fenc­ing around Moller's larg­er home and dam­aged part of her prop­er­ty.

The front wall of Moller's small­er home al­so crum­bled. Both prop­er­ties are ad­ja­cent to one an­oth­er.

To bring re­lief to the af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ty, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port award­ed con­tracts to Kall­co Ltd and Na­mal­co Con­struc­tion for a $12 mil­lion tem­po­rary by­pass that opened to the pub­lic yes­ter­day.

Last Thurs­day dozens of co­conut trees were scat­tered along the beach­front, and fall­en elec­tric­i­ty poles leaned pre­car­i­ous­ly against sway­ing pow­er lines.

Mounds of rub­ble were seen out­side the res­i­dents' homes.

The dev­as­ta­tion, Moller said, was too much to bear.

Moller has not left her house since the dis­as­ter.

She al­so man­aged with­out elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter for a month. T&TEC re­stored her elec­tric­i­ty on Christ­mas Eve.

"There was noth­ing to cel­e­brate on Christ­mas day. I didn't en­joy it at all. My place is still in a mess."

In 2014, Moller faced a sim­i­lar flood in the area but was forced to leave her prop­er­ties by the au­thor­i­ties.

"They came," she re­called, re­fus­ing to say who the au­thor­i­ties were, "and told me if I don't go they will shoot and break down the gate. So I left with them."

That flood par­tial­ly de­stroyed Moller's prop­er­ty which was lat­er as­sessed by the au­thor­i­ties. How­ev­er, Moller claimed to date she has nev­er re­ceived com­pen­sa­tion.

"I did not get a black cent. I had to start over from scratch to re­build my home."

The dam­age to her home back then was far less than what she faced last month.

She claimed that the lit­tle mon­ey she had saved for a rainy day was used to re­store her prop­er­ties to make her life more com­fort­able.

Moller spent some time in the British Vir­gin Is­lands as a geri­atric nurse in her ear­li­er years.

The el­der­ly woman es­ti­mat­ed her re­cent loss­es to be $300,000.

Moller stat­ed that no one from the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion's Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit had vis­it­ed her home as of Thurs­day to as­sess her loss­es.

Moller con­tin­ues to live in the up­per lev­el of her home with her an­i­mals, where she feels safe de­spite the lev­el of de­struc­tion around her.