Torrent takes family’s belongings

A family of eight from Harding Place, Cocorite, is singing praises to members of that community for rushing to their aid when a torrent pushed down their front wall and crashed through their front doors sending adults and children into a state of panic yesterday afternoon. “Since I living here, about 35 years, this come like history. I never see this kind of water come here, since I living here. I lost every single thing. This is history,” Hans Moniquette, family patriarch told Sunday Guardian. Relatives located in Belmont and St James were expected to have taken them in last night. Residents estimated that 4.5 inches of water rushed through the streets and the Moniquette home.

“I did not panic. I couldn’t. I had to move the children at home to safety. I had to secure them. I put them on top the table. They were bawling. My daughters were bawling, because it was the first time they were seeing that,” he recalled. His wife Dianna, 35, a hospital attendant at the St James Medical Complex, was at work when the rains and subsequent flood came. “My children called me. They were bawling on the telephone. I working right there in St James. I had to climb walls to get here. I climb over people. They told me not to go. I told them I have to go. We lost everything. All I have is the uniform I came home with and this piece of clothes on me.” Meanwhile Akeel Simon, 20, of 156 A Western Main Road, Cocorite, was asleep when his mother heard a crackling sound and awoke him just in time to rush out of the make-shift house to safety. He would take refuge in the comfort of his mother’s home at the same address.