Trapped for 15 hours while flood wa­ters rose around her, 76-year-old Bis­soon­daye Nanan cried for help be­fore she was fi­nal­ly res­cued by vil­lagers who used an in­flat­able raft.

Nanan was among hun­dreds of peo­ple left strand­ed in their homes be­cause of ris­ing flood wa­ters in the Oropouche Basin. What was worse is that her sit­u­a­tion be­came dire be­cause their cries for as­sis­tance from the T&T Reg­i­ment or T&T Coast Guard were ig­nored.

Nanan, of Su­chit Trace, Pe­nal, stood cry­ing help­less­ly in her liv­ing room while the floods rose ear­ly yes­ter­day. It was on­ly when her son Ish­war Gopaul flagged down a me­dia crew trav­el­ling on top of a dump truck, that Nanan was fi­nal­ly res­cued by a crew from the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion who were in an in­flat­able raft.

Gopaul said he was wor­ried for his moth­er.

“She is in the wa­ter for too long. She is sick and old. She needs help. Please help her out,” he plead­ed.

The four ma­jor rivers in the Oropouche Basin over­flowed and all schools in the re­gion were closed yes­ter­day af­ter flood wa­ters rose overnight due to con­tin­u­ing rain­fall. Ma­jor ar­eas, in­clud­ing Boodoo Trace, Rag­bir Trace, Gopie Trace, Tul­sa Trace, Clarke Road, Rochard Road, Pe­nal Rock Road, Bar­rack­pore Trace and Rochard Dou­glas Road, were to­tal­ly im­pass­able for the en­tire day yes­ter­day. Fu­ner­als were can­celled and emer­gency teams could not reach the hard-hit ar­eas.

At Gopie Trace, An­na Bheemul said an old man suf­fered a stroke and the am­bu­lance could not get him out.

“We had to load him on top of a trac­tor and take him to the hos­pi­tal,” she said.

Along Sat­nar­ine Trace and Rochard Road, res­i­dents could be seen strand­ed in their homes.

One man shout­ed, “Where is the army? Peo­ple here need help.”

A fam­i­ly was seen on top of the roof of their pa­tio at Pluck Road, Wood­land.

The floods from the high­er re­gions of Bar­rack­pore and Debe in­un­dat­ed the Wood­land re­gion and floods were seen en­ter­ing homes and busi­ness­es. Two cars were al­most sub­merged and oth­er ve­hi­cles were aban­doned at the side of San Fran­cique Road and La For­tune, Wood­land.

Many of the res­i­dents ex­pressed anger at Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Kaz­im Ho­sein for fail­ing to help them.

A man iden­ti­fied on­ly as Mr Gookool wad­ed through waist height wa­ter with his cow when the T&T Guardian team ar­rived. Dis­placed poul­try was al­so seen swim­ming in the la­goon while pets were tak­en to high­er ground.

Many of the res­i­dents in Pe­nal had no food or wa­ter. At Gopie Trace, six boys, Don­ny Ma­haraj, Alex Seep­er­sad, Andy Seer­at­tan, Shi­va Lal­la, San­jeev Sun­dar and Neel Ram­lal, used two rafts to car­ry re­fresh­ments to vil­lagers.

“No­body could go to work or school to­day, so we are do­ing what we can to help peo­ple get out and to bring back food and drinks for them,” Ma­haraj said.

Un­like un­scrupu­lous wreck­er op­er­a­tors who had charged be­tween $300 to $900 to pull strand­ed res­i­dents from the floods since Thurs­day evening, Ma­haraj said their trans­porta­tion was free.

By mid­day, some of the ar­eas, in­clud­ing Tenet Trace, Pluck Road, Bir­bal Trace, Dwarpaul Trace, Tul­sa Trace and Ra­ju Trace, be­gan get­ting free meals from the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal al­so dis­trib­uted meals.

Coun­cil­lor for Siparia West/Fyz­abad Dood­nath Mayrhoo said many peo­ple will have no dry place to sleep for a while.

Say­ing this year’s floods were sim­i­lar to what oc­curred last No­vem­ber, Mayrhoo blamed the sit­u­a­tion on poor drainage and non-func­tion­ing flood­gates.

“The sluice gates at Wood­land is mal­func­tion­ing. There are sev­en gates in St John and four of them are not work­ing. This is why we have a back­up of the floods. I want the Gov­ern­ment to ini­ti­ate ac­tion so that we can bring im­me­di­ate re­lief and com­pen­sa­tion for these af­fect­ed res­i­dents,” Mayrhoo said.

Ear­li­er in the day, Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Dr Allen Sam­my said the in­flat­able rafts they had were do­nat­ed by the US Em­bassy but he said this was not enough to do res­cues.

He al­so slammed the wreck­er op­er­a­tors who were charg­ing up to $900 to pull strand­ed mo­torists from ris­ing flood wa­ters. With more rain pre­dict­ed for the week­end, Sam­my said the evac­u­a­tion was nec­es­sary for some ar­eas. He called on the Min­istry of Works and Agri­cul­ture to do the com­pre­hen­sive clear­ing of the wa­ter­cours­es.

Min­istry: 230 house­hold af­fect­ed

The Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment said yes­ter­day that there were 230 house­holds af­fect­ed by flood­ing in Pe­nal/Debe and out of these sit­u­a­tions 20 peo­ple were res­cued.

It added that the Quinam/Pe­nal Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School was set up as a shel­ter and there were six fam­i­lies seek­ing lodg­ing.

In Siparia, it said ar­eas un­der wa­ter were Wood­land, San Fran­cique, Fyz­abad, Sil­ver Stream and South Oropouche. A land­slide was al­so re­port­ed at Queen Street, Siparia.

Oth­er ar­eas in the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion re­gion in­clud­ed El Car­men, Madras Road and Pi­ar­co By-Pass Road where a to­tal of 309 house­holds were af­fect­ed. No res­cues were re­port­ed there.