Residents of Palmiste Bend, San Fernando, were busy yesterday trying to salvage what they could after Saturday’s floodwaters reached over ten feet in some parts of the community.
While the tally of losses continued to rise for each of them, one family said with certainty yesterday that they had lost everything.
Taxi driver Naveed Mohammed, 35, and his wife, sales clerk Samantha Machikan, 28, live at the end of Palmiste Bend in a two-storey home constructed with wooden beams and sealed with plyboard. The home is not much to stare at compared to the others surrounding it however, the second storey where they live is filled with everything they own and need to raise their two daughters, nine and eight months old respectively.
However, on Saturday the rapidly rising waters reached almost three feet inside their upstairs dwelling space as the Cipero River, which is just metres away, burst its banks.
“I bought every single thing already. Books, uniform, every single thing. The last thing I bought was the bag and the lunch kit this Friday and every single thing went (with the flood),” Machikan told Guardian Media yesterday.
Unfortunately, this was only their most recent investment that went down the drain. Outside their home, destroyed cupboards, furniture, appliances and other unrecognisable fruits of their labour lay in a wet, musky pile waiting for a truck from local government authorities to collect and discard.
Naveed, who has lived in the area his entire life, said they had never experienced something of this magnitude before.
Apart from losing the items collected over the years, they now fear the home has been structurally compromised. Inside, the half-inch construction plyboard floors sag between joists. Simply stepping on them felt like walking on sponges as they compressed, releasing the water still trapped inside. It is why Machikan said her children are being kept away from their home.
“The board bending and everything and then it’s a baby ... she now sitting up to creep,” she said.
Anyone willing to assist the family can contact Naveed at 276-6547.