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Saturday, July 19, 2025

Vehicles swept away by flood lifted out of river

by

Bavita Gopaulchan
1443 days ago
20210805
A Hiab crane lifts one of two vehicles out of the St Ann’s River yesterday. The vehicles were washed into the river during Tuesday’s floods which affected various communities.

A Hiab crane lifts one of two vehicles out of the St Ann’s River yesterday. The vehicles were washed into the river during Tuesday’s floods which affected various communities.

ANISTO ALVES

Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

“Hurt” was the on­ly word Stephon Wells could use to de­scribe how he felt watch­ing his Toy­ota Corol­la wag­on be­ing fished out of the St Ann’s Riv­er yes­ter­day.

Wells’ ve­hi­cle and an­oth­er were swept away by rag­ing flood­wa­ters in­to the riv­er on Tues­day.

“I was work­ing at home and the ve­hi­cle was parked when the rain came down and, in a few min­utes, they say the riv­er went down with the car,” Wells told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, as he stared gloomi­ly at his man­gled wag­on on top of a truck crane.

The two ve­hi­cles were pinned to­geth­er un­der a ledge. The ex­trac­tion re­quired equip­ment from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. It took al­most two hours to lift both ve­hi­cles out of the riv­er, while scores of res­i­dents, San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cials, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan and Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Kaz­im Ho­sein looked on.

Workers from the San Juan/ Laventille regional Corporation clean an area along St Ann’s Road, yesterday, which was affected by Tuesday’s flooding.

Workers from the San Juan/ Laventille regional Corporation clean an area along St Ann’s Road, yesterday, which was affected by Tuesday’s flooding.

ANISTO ALVES

“You work hard for many years to get some­thing and it get de­stroyed in a few min­utes. I is a per­son who used to take good care of my ve­hi­cle and I nev­er got in an ac­ci­dent,” Wells lament­ed.

He said he bought the ve­hi­cle four years ago. While he is dis­traught over what hap­pened, Wells said he was grate­ful no lives were lost and no im­por­tant doc­u­ments, oth­er than the ve­hi­cle’s reg­is­tra­tion and in­sur­ance doc­u­ments, were in at the time.

Sev­er­al homes and one bridge in the St Ann’s area sus­tained dam­age dur­ing the flood­ing, but cor­po­ra­tion chair­man An­tho­ny Roberts could not con­firm how many ex­act­ly.

He told Guardian Me­dia the cor­po­ra­tion and CEPEP work­ers had been out for hours clean­ing up the area and car­ry­ing out as­sess­ments fol­low­ing Tues­day’s flood­ing.

“The re­sources would nev­er be suf­fi­cient but we have learned to make do with what we have,” he stat­ed.

Roberts said, luck­i­ly, it was on­ly one mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty that was af­fect­ed. He said it was the most dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing he had ever wit­nessed.

Mean­while, com­muters were yes­ter­day able to move smooth­ly in and around South Quay in Port-of-Spain, which was al­so flood­ed on Tues­day af­ter just 45 min­utes of rain.

 A Port-of-Spain City Corporation worker shovels slush off the roadway on South Quay Port-of-Spain, during the after flood a clean up excerise, yesterday.

A Port-of-Spain City Corporation worker shovels slush off the roadway on South Quay Port-of-Spain, during the after flood a clean up excerise, yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

Min­is­ter Ho­sein told Guardian Me­dia that it took close to 24 hours for crews to have the area com­plete­ly cleaned. He said re­sources had to be pulled from un­af­fect­ed re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions from as far as San­gre Grande and Point Fortin to get the job done swift­ly.

Ho­sein said the floods could not have been pre­vent­ed.

“All wa­ter­cours­es were cleaned but still you could not have stopped that heavy amount of rain­fall,” Ho­sein said.

In fact, he not­ed that the flood would have been more dis­as­trous if the flood pump sys­tem at South Quay was not work­ing.

Ho­sein, ac­com­pa­nied by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds, Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port-of-Spain South Kei­th Scot­land, toured South Quay yes­ter­day morn­ing while cleanup ef­forts con­tin­ued.

Ho­sein al­so in­di­cat­ed that res­i­dents of East Port-of-Spain and St Ann’s took the ini­tia­tive and be­gan clean­ing up their sur­round­ing ar­eas, which cleared the egress and made it eas­i­er and more ac­ces­si­ble for the back­hoes, wa­ter trucks, open tray trucks and oth­er equip­ment to eas­i­ly pass through.

A pedestrian walks past flood debris on the Saddle Road, Maraval yesterday. 

A pedestrian walks past flood debris on the Saddle Road, Maraval yesterday. 

ANISTO ALVES


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