Sascha Wil­son

Res­i­dents were ma­rooned due to floods and land­slips in the Wood­land and Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituen­cy up to last evening, as the coun­try con­tin­ued to be drenched by tor­ren­tial rain­fall.

It’s the sec­ond time in two weeks that Wood­land res­i­dents have had to en­dure high lev­els of flood­wa­ters cov­er­ing the road and flow­ing in­to their prop­er­ties.

There were re­ports of street flood­ing in oth­er ar­eas in south Trinidad, in­clud­ing Debe, Pe­nal and Bar­rack­pore, but most of the wa­ter had re­ced­ed by last evening.

But, Wood­land res­i­dents were not that lucky. Res­i­dent Toolool Pi­ar­alal, 57, broke down in tears dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia along the La For­tune Road. He said he and his wife had no choice but to leave their home since Fri­day when flood­wa­ter start­ed to rise.

He said his wife was now stay­ing with her par­ents in Princes Town while he is stay­ing at his fa­ther’s home. “I left Fri­day, plen­ty wa­ter in­side the house, so much wa­ter all my things gone through in­side there, the couch, stove, fridge, stereo, every­thing, every­thing. We give up. We don’t know what to do,” he com­plained.

Pi­ar­alal said this was the sec­ond time that flood­wa­ters had flowed in­side of his home. Lament­ing that he has suf­fered thou­sands of dol­lars in loss­es, he said, “It very hurt­ful.”

Pi­ar­alal said he has lived in Wood­land for 31 years but is now con­sid­er­ing re­lo­cat­ing.

“I tell she let we look to sell it and move out be­cause 31 years I liv­ing there, it not easy.”

Mean­while, Table­land/Moru­ga MP Michelle Ben­jamin said a wide area of the road net­work in her con­stituen­cy was com­pro­mised due to land­slips, af­fect­ing hun­dreds of res­i­dents. She said one of the worst ar­eas was along Di­a­mond Road, St Croix, Princes Town, where res­i­dents have been cut off by sev­er­al land­slips.

“The whole road has land­slips and right now per­sons will be ma­rooned with this con­stant rain­fall,” she said.

How­ev­er, she said sev­er­al oth­ers were af­fect­ed, in­clud­ing the Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road, Roberts Vil­lages, Gaffoor and Gloud Road, Hin­dus­tan, Sixth Com­pa­ny Cir­cu­lar and La Lune and sev­er­al homes are at risk.

“We are plead­ing and beg­ging for some sort of as­sis­tance,” she said.