Akash Samaroo
An exhausted Lydia Belliel surveyed the damage to her home on Thursday.
A thin layer of sludge still stuck to her floor, there was damp furniture outside and her entire Grande Riviere home was in disarray.
“I always say people in the country, they like to say we behind God’s back so that is the mentality they does treat us here with,” she said.
Belliel said the comment was in reference to the response time from both the Ministry of Rural Development and Local Government and Sangre Grande Regional Corporation officials.
Residents of both Grande Riviere and Matelot were hit with three natural disasters in a matter of hours following the passage of Tuesday’s weather system.
Floods, landslips and coastal erosion left many calling for help on Wednesday evening. However, a decision was made by the Ministry of Local Government to wait until morning due to the floods.
For Belliel, that was not good enough, as she recounted what happened when the rivers near her home burst their banks.
“Water was coming from that direction and that direction,” Belliel said, pointing to her left and right.
“So I was literally in the middle, so water start to rise, we tried our best to pick up valuables and we tried to jump through the window because no doors were able to open but when I jump out, the water was reaching me here,” she added, pointing to her chest.
Belliel said she had all of eight minutes to evacuate her home.
Her neighbour Miguel, however, was not home at that time. He was one of those who was stranded outside the community by one of the landslips.
When Guardian Media arrived at his home around midday yesterday, Miguel was opening his doors for the first time since the flood.
“Well, everything gone through as you could see,” Miguel said with a wry smile on his face.
“You can’t do anything you know, Government needs to come and dredge this river.”
A couple of miles away at the Grande Riviere beach, the front portion of Eunice Cox’s home now belonged to the sea.
When the water levels rose at the river mouth, it came crashing onto her home around 9 pm on Wednesday, the swash of the water now touching her front door.
“Well, this was like a nightmare, the river came tumbling down and it was so quick you could hardly take down anything, it was like an explosion that took place, the way how it high, it come in high here and bang down the house and mash-up our things,” Cox said.
Cox said this was unprecedented for even those who had lived near the coastline their entire lives.
“My husband is going to be 77 years old and he told me that this is the worst he has ever seen with this river.”
A short distance away along the shoreline, several turtle eggs were seen scattered along the sand.
The residents were visited by several agencies yesterday, including the Sangre Grande Regional Corporation (SGRC), Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM) and officials from the Ministry of Rural Development and Local Government.
SGRC chairman Anil Juteram expressed the dissatisfaction of residents with respect to the response time of the agencies. He admitted better could be done.
He said, “I share their sentiments and it is unfortunate that the systems are not in place, I understand the last time this place got this level of flooding was six years ago. Six years to now some sort of remedial action and template should have been put in place, we will be making recommendations for the various ministries to beef up their equipment in the Toco area. As you know, in the SGRC we have three backhoes, only one is currently working and that is the one we sent up here.”
Meanwhile, Toco/Fishing Pond councillor Terry Rondon also expressed disappointment.
He said, “I made calls to the SGRC and they all decided to send a backhoe up when it was ready the truck to carry the backhoe had a flat tyre, it wasn’t nice, so my appeal is to have a backhoe standby in Toco.”
But the residents want less talk and more action going forward. Because as the agencies are doing their post mortems, one man shouted, “Is only poor people does suffer you know.”