Suffering still in Penal

At Batchiya Trace, residents Vijay Rampersad and Francis Ajodha both from Ragoonanan Trace said that people in the community have since Tuesday been waiting for the floodwater to subside so they can clean their homes and take stock of what they had lost. They confirmed that families still remain marooned in their houses.

“The water there is between three and four feet deep and only heavy equipment can pass through that,” Rampersad said.

Sooklal Siewlal who lives in Batchiya Trace told Newsday that he secured his house and fell asleep on Monday night.

“During the night, I just hear plenty noise from the wind and when I put my foot down from off the bed I felt water. My house was flooded out while I slept,” Siewlal said, adding he lost everything including large appliances such as stove and refrigerator.

Penal/Debe Regional Corporation (PDRC) chairman Dr Allen Sammy said cleanup operations were ongoing throughout the corporation which spans the constituencies of Oropouche East, Oropouche West, Naparima and Siparia.

“We have brought in additional staff to help but there are two main areas where we will need help with and that is we badly need excavators, which we don’t have and we will need assistance with spraying because you know the consequence of all of this is water will settle and then mosquitoes will breed and there will be health issues,” Sammy said.

“We have established a priority for clean-up and we are utilising resources that we have internally to engage in these exercises but there will be major remedial work that would require excavators and trucks,” he said. Sammy said the corporation received approximately 805 disaster reports, of which 156 were for either partially or fully blown off roofs.