Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin pledged her of­fice's as­sis­tance to Ann Thomas, of Don Kel­ly Street, Laven­tille, who lost her roof in yes­ter­day's heavy rains and winds. Top­pin, who vis­it­ed on be­half of Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, who is in Or­lan­do, Flori­da, said as min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment she plans to en­sure Thomas' ap­pli­ances are re­placed, as well as hav­ing her roof re­paired with the as­sis­tance of the Min­istry of Hous­ing. She said the min­istry would al­so re­place Thomas' sewing ma­chines, from which she earns an in­come through a mi­cro-en­ter­prise grant. Al­leyne-Top­pin said: "She had been sewing some school uni­forms, and sev­er­al of those got dam­aged and so on. So the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment will give her back her ap­pli­ances and mat­tress­es for the beds, and hous­ing, which is rep­re­sent­ed by Mr Gre­go­ry Re­ece, will do the re­pairs to the roof. "And we are do­ing all of this in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Hous­ing, Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, and with the MP for the area, Nile­ung Hy­po­lite. He has been here and the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion has been here. A com­bi­na­tion of gov­ern­ment agen­cies will be work­ing with her."

Al­leyne-Top­pin said 70,000 fam­i­lies had been af­fect­ed in the Diego Mar­tin/Pe­tit Val­ley area. She said ap­pli­ances will be bought from to­day, al­though the Gov­ern­ment is un­able to give lux­u­ry items. She ex­tend­ed her sym­pa­thies to the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies of the floods and land­slides. Sim­i­lar­ly, Gre­go­ry Re­ece, the Peo­ple's Is­sues in­ter­face of­fi­cer for the Min­istry of Hous­ing, said to date sev­en fam­i­lies from Diego Mar­tin had been re­lo­cat­ed to hous­ing in Orop­une and 16 more fam­i­lies would be moved to­day. The min­istry's build­ing as­ses­sors, he said, have been sent out to see whether re­pairs can be done to the dam­aged hous­es or if fam­i­lies need to be re­lo­cat­ed. The min­istry, he said, is is­su­ing a spe­cial emer­gency hous­ing grant for re­pairs, for which 250 peo­ple ap­plied over the week­end. He said he ex­pects that with­in 21 days, peo­ple would have re­ceived help.

This, Re­ece said, will set back the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion's (HDC) hous­ing dri­ve a lit­tle, but the cor­po­ra­tion will con­tin­ue full steam ahead with the lead­er­ship of Jear­lean John, HDC's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor.

Yes­ter­day's heavy rains and winds again caused land­slides, felled trees and caused flash flood­ing in sev­er­al ar­eas through­out T&T. On Sev­enth Street, Barataria, when the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 am, po­lice and work­ers from the San/Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion were busy re­mov­ing the re­mains of a tree that had fall­en across the La­dy Young Road. Ca­ble provider Flow and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) were al­so on site to re­pair dam­age done to the ca­bles by the fall­en tree. Mud and silt cov­ered one half of the road as po­lice of­fi­cers and re­gion­al work­ers at­tempt­ed to clean up the mess.