The search by a group of Bagatelle res­i­dents for a miss­ing 31-year-old moth­er, Anisa “Smal­ly” Lewis, con­tin­ued late in­to Sat­ur­day night. Res­i­dents be­lieve Lewis was swept away by wa­ter on Fri­day af­ter­noon while try­ing to ex­it a spring in the hills of Bagatelle in Diego Mar­tin.

Last Thurs­day night in­to Fri­day, heavy rain and strong winds from a trop­i­cal wave caused dam­age across parts of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Trees fell and roofs were blown off in Mt St George, Diego Mar­tin, Ari­ma, Ma­yaro, San Fer­nan­do, Cara­pichaima, St He­le­na and oth­er ar­eas. There were al­so re­ports of pow­er out­ages in Cou­va, San­gre Grande and Point Fortin.

Ac­cord­ing to Lewis’ best friend, Neela Ra­jku­mar, she ac­com­pa­nied Lewis and two oth­er friends to the spring.

Oth­er peo­ple were lim­ing at the spring when they got there, she said.

While at the spring, Ra­jku­mar said, peo­ple start­ed to ob­serve large amounts of wa­ter com­ing down from the wa­ter­fall above.

“So when we saw the wa­ter com­ing down every­body start­ed to come out of the wa­ter and start­ed to gears up. I say, Smal­ly, let’s go. She turned around and start­ed pick­ing up her things for us to walk out,” she re­called.

“When we walked out, I said, come let’s go, the wa­ter is com­ing down heav­ier. She said, ‘Oh, God; Oh, God! I am right be­hind you’.”

Ra­jku­mar said when she got to the spring’s bank, the wa­ter was al­ready waist-high.

She said the wa­ter was push­ing stronger and stronger, so she had to pull on two branch­es to get to the oth­er side.

“I didn’t study in the wa­ter to look back be­cause I was fight­ing my way to get out of the wa­ter be­cause the wa­ter was push­ing. When I reached on the next side, I turned back and I said, where Smal­ly? Be­cause I knew she was right be­hind me,” Ra­jku­mar said.

Anisa Lewis missing.

“I start­ed to call out but re­mem­ber, I don’t want to go back in the wa­ter by my­self. So, I walked back out on the road and saw two young men. One of them car­ried me on their back and the two of them were hold­ing hands to go through the wa­ter be­cause the wa­ter was push­ing them.”

Their at­tempts to find Lewis, how­ev­er, were fu­tile.

Lat­er on Fri­day evening, fire of­fi­cers joined the search, but they al­so failed to find the moth­er of one.

The search ef­fort by a group of Bagatelle res­i­dents con­tin­ued in­to Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

When Guardian Me­dia met up with the search group of more than 20 peo­ple Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon, they were search­ing in and around the Diego Mar­tin Riv­er near West­moor­ings.

At the time, the group was wait­ing for fur­ther as­sis­tance from the au­thor­i­ties to help find Lewis.

Guardian Me­dia was told a search and res­cue team joined the group lat­er on.

Lewis was wear­ing a white vest and yel­low jeans.

Un­der cur­rent pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions due to COVID-19, swim­ming and lim­ing at beach­es, rivers and oth­er bod­ies of wa­ter are pro­hib­it­ed.

Bagatelle residents look for missing Anisa Lewis around the Diego Martin River near Westmoorings on Saturday.

NICOLE DRAYTON

ODPM up­date

Re­lief ef­forts con­tin­ued across the coun­try yes­ter­day in re­sponse to ex­ten­sive dam­age caused by a trop­i­cal wave on Fri­day.

The ODPM, in co-or­di­na­tion with re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, cut and re­moved scores of fall­en trees in Ari­ma, Ch­agua­nas, Ma­yaro, La Brea, Debe, Pe­nal, San Juan, Laven­tille, Rio Claro, San­gre Grande, Port-of-Spain, Princes Town, La Brea, Siparia, San Fer­nan­do and oth­er ar­eas.

In to­tal, there were 163 re­ports of fall­en trees, ac­cord­ing to the ODPM. Up to Sat­ur­day evening, 122 of the trees were cut or cleared.

ODPM said it al­so dis­trib­uted tar­pau­lins and mat­tress­es to dozens of peo­ple who lost roofs in all the re­spec­tive ar­eas.

There were 539 dam­aged roof re­ports, ac­cord­ing to the ODPM.

202 roofs were re­paired or cov­ered up to Sat­ur­day evening.

Ac­cord­ing to the ODPM, it will con­tin­ue to re­spond to the hun­dreds of re­ports that it re­ceived in the com­ing days.

Mean­while, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port al­so con­tin­ued re­spond­ing to re­ports on Sat­ur­day.

The min­istry re­spond­ed to re­ports along the North Coast Road, the Man­zanil­la stretch, An­tigua Road, Blan­chisseuse Road, Fish­ing Pond, Guia­co Tamana, Cleaver Road, the Va­len­cia stretch and the Point Fortin Main Road.

There were 22 re­ports of blocked road­ways. All have been cleared, ac­cord­ing to the ODPM.

Ad­verse weath­er alert dis­con­tin­ued

Mean­while, the ad­verse weath­er alert which took ef­fect from mid­night on Fri­day, and was sub­se­quent­ly ex­tend­ed sev­er­al times, end­ed at 2.51 pm Sat­ur­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice in its up­date, “The rain­fall ac­tiv­i­ty due to the trop­i­cal wave has now dis­si­pat­ed.” Its risk as­sess­ment ma­trix, at the time of the up­date, read un­like­ly and very low im­pact.

A haz­ardous seas alert from Sep­tem­ber 5 to mid­day on Sep­tem­ber 10 was is­sued. The up­date said, “North-east­er­ly to east­er­ly high en­er­gy swells are ex­pect­ed to im­pact nearshore ar­eas along ex­posed coast­lines of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The swells can re­sult in high­er surfs and oc­ca­sion­al bat­ter­ing waves.”