The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) is seek­ing to as­sure res­i­dents of Re­al Spring, Val­sayn, that there is lit­tle to fear over the in­tegri­ty of two elec­tric­i­ty poles car­ry­ing high-ten­sion wires on the west­ern side of the es­tate.

Res­i­dents were yes­ter­day fear­ful that re­cent flood­ing had erod­ed the land around the poles and that an­oth­er flood in the area could cause them to col­lapse.

“This pos­es a re­al dan­ger al­ready as it is be­cause one of the poles is ac­tu­al­ly lean­ing. Every time the wa­ter comes up over the riv­er bank it is tak­ing a piece of the land. This flood was the worst so far and if this kind of flood­ing hap­pens again it can be worse and those poles can go with the land and wa­ters caus­ing grave dan­ger,” one res­i­dent said.

How­ev­er, the HDC sent a crew to take a look at the poles yes­ter­day and was able to as­sure the res­i­dents that their fears were not war­rant­ed at this time.

The HDC said that the in­spec­tion they did re­vealed that the poles were sta­ble and pose no dan­ger.

How­ev­er, the HDC said that out of an abun­dance of cau­tion, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion will put some ad­di­tion­al sup­port at the base of the pole.

Res­i­dents were yes­ter­day still clean­ing up from floods that oc­curred ear­li­er this week.

“We got as­sis­tance ini­tial­ly from an HDC main­te­nance crew and now we have to do the rest but it is a lot more. In my apart­ment, the kitchen cup­boards got wa­ter soaked. The sand­bags we put around did not help the sit­u­a­tion. Wa­ter was seep­ing through the cracks, the steps and even the sew­er lines in some of our units in the de­vel­op­ment,” one woman told us.

An­oth­er res­i­dent said he lost his en­tire liv­ing room set and pos­si­bly some ma­jor house­hold ap­pli­ances.

“I had to put my stove and fridge on con­crete blocks. There was sev­en inch­es of wa­ter in­side the house. Most of the tiles lift­ed and I was told to get a pri­vate con­trac­tor to get a quo­ta­tion to sub­mit to HDC but I hope that we are well com­pen­sat­ed. All my plants around my home dy­ing. There was four feet of wa­ter over my fence. Ter­ri­ble, we can­not af­ford for this to hap­pen to us again.”

Last week, HDC’s chair­man Noel Gar­cia as­sured that mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures will be im­ple­ment­ed in the de­vel­op­ment sim­i­lar to what was done at HDC’s Green­vale hous­ing de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing the in­stal­la­tion of pumps and sluice gates.

At Bam­boo Num­ber Three, streets were lined with de­bris in­clud­ing dam­aged fur­ni­ture, clothes, toys and mat­tress­es.

Res­i­dent Jee­wan Ma­hadeo, 55, said he has been liv­ing in the area all his life and added that it was the first time he had ever seen so much flood­ing.

“We were un­der four, five feet of wa­ter. I’m tired clean­ing up. All my things are out­side but al­most every­thing dam­aged and de­stroyed. My dogs were up­stairs in a lit­tle cor­ner for days. This is very, very bad. We nev­er ex­pect­ed this at all and some­thing needs to be done. The last flood was in 2018 and this year about 90 per cent of the vil­lage flood­ed out. Who nev­er got flood, got flood this time,” Ma­hadeo said.

“They need to raise the banks be­cause them banks there fail­ing,” he added.

Coun­cil­lor for Val­sayn/St Joseph in the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Seema Ram­saran-Au­gus­tine was in the area.

“We com­menced an ex­er­cise with the Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness Man­age­ment where we dis­trib­uted mat­tress­es and clean­ing sup­plies. So we are go­ing street to street dis­trib­ut­ing. Some fam­i­lies with a lot of chil­dren got two mat­tress­es but in all, we had about 80 to be giv­en out and we are still ac­cept­ing do­na­tions for the flood vic­tims.”