Geisha Kow­lessar

in St Lu­cia

St Lu­cia needs tens of mil­lions of dol­lars to get back on its feet, says Prime Min­is­ter Ken­ny An­tho­ny.He made the com­ment to 16 mem­bers of the T&T me­dia who ac­com­pa­nied of­fi­cials from the Of­fice and Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness (ODPM) and Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter to St Lu­cia yes­ter­day, to drop off aid sup­plies in the wake of flood­ing and land­slides which rav­aged that coun­try ear­li­er this week.

An­tho­ny said the lat­est dis­as­ter would be hard to re­cov­er from quick­ly, es­pe­cial­ly since the is­land was just re­cov­er­ing from Hur­ri­cane Thomas which dealt a ter­ri­ble blow to St Lu­cia.He said in his con­stituen­cy of Vieux Fort South, res­i­dents had lost every­thing as flood wa­ters rose to as high as eight feet. Some 500 res­i­dents, An­tho­ny said, were now in shel­ters.

Re­count­ing the mo­ments lead­ing up to the storm, An­tho­ny said: "By five o'clock on Christ­mas Eve it was fair­ly clear what was hap­pen­ing. I live in the area close to the city on a hill and I was ma­rooned for quite a while. I couldn't leave my home."On a brief tour of the is­land yes­ter­day, huge trees, mounds of sand and oth­er de­bris were strewn across road­ways.High­ways and oth­er ma­jor roads were ripped apart by pow­er­ful flood wa­ters, leav­ing gap­ing holes, some deep as eight me­tres.

An­tho­ny said com­mu­ni­ties in Bex­on were the most af­fect­ed, as they al­so suf­fered se­vere dev­as­ta­tion by Hur­ri­cane Thomas some three years ago.Homes re­mained com­plete­ly sub­merged yes­ter­day in Vieux Fort South, the hard­est hit area in St Lu­cia.An­tho­ny said it had been very dis­tress­ing that some peo­ple had still not been able to re­turn to their homes be­cause they were filled with mud and de­bris.

He said: "This is very dis­tress­ing to say the least. Many peo­ple have not ben able to re­turn to their homes be­cause their homes are filled with mud and de­bris."And so it is go­ing to take some time for them to clean their homes and re­turn," he added.An­tho­ny praised the ef­forts of the T&T Gov­ern­ment, say­ing T&T was the first re­spon­der to lend as­sis­tance.Mean­while, press sec­re­tary to St Lu­cia PM, Ja­dia Jn Pierre, said the St Lu­cian gov­ern­ment was eter­nal­ly grate­ful to T&T.

"Your as­sis­tance would bring smiles to many in St Lu­cia," she said, adding the T&T gov­ern­ment was one of the first re­spon­ders.Mem­bers of the T&T me­dia left Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day af­ter­noon on a CAL 737 air­craft which took aid sup­plies to the is­land, which was bat­tered by flood­ing on Christ­mas Day.St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Do­mini­ca were al­so rav­aged by flood­ing due to the pow­er­ful weath­er sys­tem, which left 14 peo­ple dead–eight in St Vin­cent and six in St Lu­cia.

On Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, chair­man of Cari­com and lead Prime Min­is­ter on se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion, vis­it­ed St Lu­cia af­ter man­dat­ing the ODPM to as­sist that coun­try with emer­gency sup­plies in­clud­ing canned goods, bis­cuits, in­fant for­mu­la, mat­tress­es, blan­kets, hy­giene kits, dis­as­ter kits and first aid kits.St Lu­cia was the on­ly is­land to re­quest as­sis­tance from T&T. Al­so on Thurs­day, the T&T Air Guard made two trips to the is­land and de­liv­ered 100 cas­es of wa­ter.