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.

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.

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. 

ANISTO ALVES