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Monday, July 14, 2025

Woodland infested with snakes, beetles, scorpions

by

760 days ago
20230616

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Wood­land res­i­dents faced a chal­leng­ing night on Wednes­day as with the re­ced­ing flood wa­ters there has been an in­fes­ta­tion of cen­tipedes, scor­pi­ons, bee­tles and snakes in their homes. Adding to their mis­ery is the stench from de­cay­ing car­cass­es in the la­goons be­hind their homes. 

Paro Man­chan and his fam­i­ly had to wade through Pluck Road with bags of cloth­ing and a case of wa­ter in search of a dry place to sleep at a rel­a­tive’s house.

“Our house is still sub­merged. There’s knee-high wa­ter in­side. We can’t stay there, every­thing is dam­aged. Our beds are wet, cloth­ing, every­thing’s gone,” he said.

The flood­ing was caused by a breach in the New Cut Chan­nel.

On Mon­day, four breach­es were iden­ti­fied, one of which has since been fixed by Laing Con­trac­tors.

Li­quat Ali-Khan, ar­rived from Princes Town to dis­trib­ute sand­wich­es and wa­ter to flood-af­fect­ed fam­i­lies. 

“We heard about the floods, so we pre­pared din­ner and dis­trib­uted it to all the hous­es to pro­vide com­fort to those af­fect­ed by this great flood,” Ali-Khan said.

In to­tal, he dis­trib­uted 270 sand­wich­es.

 Pres­i­dent of the Wood­land Flood Ac­tion Group Adesh Singh said the area was scary at night.

“We have lots of dead an­i­mals float­ing around be­cause their nat­ur­al habi­tats were dis­turbed. Be­cause of the speed at which the floods rose, they didn’t have time to go to se­cure grounds,” he said.

“We are scared and it is dif­fi­cult, es­pe­cial­ly for par­ents who have kids, es­pe­cial­ly since caimans, rats, spi­ders, snakes, scor­pi­ons, are com­ing in­to your homes.”

Sie­u­nar­ine Bans­gopaul said his broth­er Jef­frey had fall­en ill be­cause of the hor­rid con­di­tions.

“Every­where is wa­ter­logged. We can­not cook in the kitchen,” he said.

On­ly one bed­room is hab­it­able and that is where the fam­i­ly cooks, sleeps and eats.

Sub­ri­na Bans­gopaul, who sat on a mat­tress help­ing her chil­dren with their home­work, said, “My wish is to have a safe place to put my chil­dren. It is not easy be­ing in this kind of en­vi­ron­ment.”

Pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Group Ed­ward Mood­ie called emer­gency shel­ters should be set up near to flood­ed com­mu­ni­ties. He said too of­ten vic­tims face ad­di­tion­al stress from thieves who pil­fer valu­ables. He said there should be a flood re­lief plan could im­me­di­ate­ly kick in­to place to bring help to peo­ple faster. 

The floods sub­sided in sev­er­al ar­eas but in many side traces there were still ex­ten­sive floods. Late yes­ter­day, pipe borne wa­ter was re­stored in the flood­ed ar­eas, al­low­ing res­i­dents to clean and cook.


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