Jesse Ramdeo

Emer­gency aid and as­sis­tance had to be pro­vid­ed to an el­der­ly cou­ple trapped by flood­wa­ters along the Ca­roni South Bank road on Thurs­day. While the cou­ple re­fused to leave their house even as flood­wa­ters rose, vil­lagers re­mained vig­i­lant, en­sur­ing that their lives were not placed in dan­ger.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area, which was one of the worst im­pact­ed by flood­ing, short­ly af­ter mid­day, the street on which 68-year-old Zan­if­fa and her 75-year-old hus­band Zain­udeen Gyan re­side was com­plete­ly un­der wa­ter and bare­ly pass­able by a van.

Short­ly af­ter Guardian Me­dia ar­rived at the lo­ca­tion to as­sess the ex­tent of flood­ing, vil­lager Reevon Lal­too, along with oth­er young men, al­so ar­rived on the scene.

While it was risky to wade through the al­most knee-high wa­ter lit­tered with de­bris, the young men still per­se­vered to ac­cess the el­der­ly cou­ple’s home that had been sur­round­ed by rapid­ly in­creas­ing flood­wa­ters.

Ac­cord­ing to Lal­too, if the bold steps were not tak­en, the el­der­ly man and woman could have been strand­ed with­out crit­i­cal aid for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od.

He stat­ed, “We come to just give them a lit­tle hand we bring the truck to get them out be­cause the wa­ter now start to rise as time pro­gress­es, the safer thing is to get every­one out.”

Lal­too, who led res­cue ef­forts, said they planned to re­turn with a boat to ei­ther take the pen­sion­ers to safe­ty or pro­vide them with food and oth­er sup­plies. He and oth­er young­sters in the area said they stood ready to lend a help­ing hand to those im­pact­ed by re­cent flood­ing in Las Lo­mas.

But while re­lief was reach­ing some, those along El Car­men Num­ber 5, St He­le­na, felt for­got­ten.

Soomatie Ma­haraj said, “The wa­ter start to rise this morn­ing and look from this morn­ing to now we ex­pect­ing it to come in the gallery, last time it reach in­side. No­body doesn’t come here it could have how much flood, no­body does come and look for we, no­body don’t come and say noth­ing in the back here. We fed up ap­peal for help, noth­ing does hap­pen.”

New home­own­er Ra­jesh Seep­er­sad lament­ed the lack of crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture that con­tin­ued to con­tribute to the del­uge.

He said, “One prob­lem we have here is no drainage. This here is what hap­pens every time rain falls so imag­ine if a storm pass­es what will hap­pen.”

Seep­er­sad said if there was an­oth­er down­pour, the sit­u­a­tion could quick­ly wors­en.