Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Many of the vil­lagers along the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road have re­port­ed­ly re­fused to evac­u­ate de­spite as­sis­tance of­fered to help them get out of their flood-rav­aged homes.

Some have even opt­ed to stay in struc­tures that are cur­rent­ly not sound.

The Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road has been closed to all ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic since last week. Since then, parts of the road have been sink­ing in­to the near­by ocean.

The broth­er of a vil­lager along the road, Gar­net Moller, un­suc­cess­ful­ly tried to per­suade his sis­ter Car­ol, who is in her 60s, to leave her col­laps­ing house on Mon­day.

Gar­net Moller was in Man­zanil­la as ear­ly as 6 am with the sup­port of po­lice and fire of­fi­cers. How­ev­er, they could not per­suade Car­ol Moller to evac­u­ate.

“She be­lieves that she is safe there and once you think you are safe, I don’t know what to say. I have been here since 8 am and I must say thanks to all these peo­ple here be­cause they made a very gal­lant ef­fort. She still does not want to come out, her mind is set to stay there,” Gar­net Moller said, adding, “I would not sleep com­fort­ably till that wa­ter comes down and her house is safe.”

He said the house is on the verge of col­laps­ing.

“My sis­ter wants to stay in a house next to hers and her two-sto­ry house, if it col­laps­es, will fall on that house but she does not want to leave. No­body is to blame right now, it will on­ly be her as we tried to get her out,” he said.

The Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road, with­in a week, has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed even more, as the sea and riv­er un­der­mined the road­way and in some ar­eas, co­conut trees have fall­en in­to the sea.

San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion cha­ri­man Anil Juter­am was on hand to as­sist those who need­ed to be evac­u­at­ed and was hurt some did not com­ply.

“It is very dis­ap­point­ing that de­spite all the re­sources, vil­lagers opt­ing to stay and en­dan­ger them­selves,” he said.

Juter­am said his re­gion has been bad­ly af­fect­ed.

So far, many homes in the re­gion have been af­fect­ed and as­sess­ments are be­ing con­duct­ed to help many, but this will be done when the wa­ter sub­sides.