The sound of heavy rain pound­ing on his roof and strong winds awoke Gary El­ligon from his sleep and he watched help­less­ly as the storm blew out a part of the roof of his Flan­ni­gin Town house and knocked boards from the walls.Sev­er­al miles away at Todd's Road, 62-year-old Cather­ine Ros­al en­dured a night of hor­ror af­ter a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of her roof blew off dur­ing the rain­storm.Ros­al wept as she watched her bed, wardrobe and clothes be­ing soaked by rain beat­ing in­to the house through the open roof.

El­ligon, a 43-year-old labour­er, said in an in­ter­view he was asleep around 3 am Fri­day when the sound of rain pound­ing heav­i­ly on the roof of his wood­en house on Mamoral Road awoke him."The rain came in­to the house and wet the couch and oth­er things," he said, try­ing to ap­pear calm.He said he has not es­ti­mat­ed the cost of the dam­age but would ap­pre­ci­ate as­sis­tance to con­struct one room in a house he start­ed build­ing.

"I al­ready put down the foun­da­tion. It would not make sense to spend mon­ey to re­pair the board house."If I get a lit­tle as­sis­tance, me and my fam­i­ly can stay in the room un­til I fin­ish my house."A team from the cor­po­ra­tion's dis­as­ter unit jour­neyed up to the re­mote rur­al area of Mamoral Road in the Cen­tral Range, and to Todd's Road, with mat­tress­es, food sup­plies and tar­pau­lins to bring tem­po­rary re­lief to El­ligon and Ros­al.

Ros­al's son-in-law Rudy Ram­di­al said she has been liv­ing with her 26-year old son in their wood­en house af­ter her hus­band died. Ram­di­al said neigh­bours came to her res­cue at day­break and nailed back the gal­vanise and put con­crete blocks on it to keep it down.Chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/ Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Hen­ry Awong said the cor­po­ra­tion would get dif­fer­ent min­istries and agen­cies in­volved to as­sist El­ligon in con­struct­ing a room and help­ing Ros­al build a roof.

"There is the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry with the home re­pairs grant and there's the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self Help."The Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion got no re­ports of dam­aged hous­es in the area, the Guardian was told.Heavy rains with gusty winds be­gan on Thurs­day af­ter­noon af­ter a pro­longed pe­ri­od of gen­er­al dry­ness.There were re­ports of the roofs of sev­er­al hous­es in the south be­ing blown off.To­ba­go re­port­ed some dam­age, as well.