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"I lost everything!"
This was the lament of Maureen Roberts-Weekes, matriarch of the Symond Valley Road settlement at St Ann's, speaking to Newsday on Thursday, still dazed at the devastation wrought by Tuesday's overspilling of the St Ann's River which had deluged her home with mud.
Yet her family members and neighbours, helping to clear up, showed the fighting spirit of a community determined to do its best to salvage the situation, ahead of the arrival of targeted help from local and national authorities.
On Thursday, Newsday saw the generic help of water trucks hosing down the road to get rid of mud which would dry out into dust, plus trucks to carry away mud and vegetation.
Residents sought relief from the current inundation plus remedial works to the river to curb any repeat of such flood damage, Newsday learnt.
The scene at Symond Valley Road was a strange mix of despair and hope.
By the roadside, a ruined sofa awaited collection for dumping.
[caption id="attachment_905569" align="alignnone" width="1024"] HELPING HAND: Philip Batteau removes mud from a stove belonging to his neighbour Maureen Roberts-Weekes at her Symond Valley Road, St Ann's home on Thursday. - AYANNA KINSALE[/caption]
Several men showed Newsday a four-foot-high waterline left by flood waters inside Roberts-Weekes' house.
Outside, her worldly possessions – coated with mud – were stacked forlornly to be discarded, except those capable of redemption.
Her stove was being hosed down by neighbour Philip Batteau, fairly optimistic it could be saved, but a freezer will need a new compressor to be revived.
"It still has meat in it," he said.
"We are not opening it at all."
Batteau had his own problems, with his house now being isolated higher up the main road by the collapse of a bridge in the flood, yet he exuded a keen altruism and neighbourliness.
A church sister pulled up in a car to warmly greet Roberts-Weekes with the gift of a cooked lunch. Later on, three members of the NGO Is There Not A Cause (ITNAC) picked their way through the mud to go to the house.
[caption id="attachment_905570" align="alignnone" width="1024"] RIVER BATH: Having had no pipe-borne water since Tuesday’s flood, Elijah Ince and his brother Keone resorted to bathing in the St Ann’s river on Thursday while their mother (not in photo) washes clothes and keeps an eye on them. - AYANNA KINSALE[/caption]
One man told Newsday that the day before, some 20 to 30 young men from the area had all rallied round to help carry the mud-caked items out of Roberts-Weekes' house into the yard, so the house could be cleaned inside.
Two boys, Mark and Kristen, told Newsday the floodwaters had brought an unexpected bounty, plentiful river eels which they darted among rocks in the rivers to hunt.
"We can sell these to the Chinese for $40 for two," Mark boasted.
Without a water-supply, a young mother washed clothes in the river, resilient, as her children splashed around in glee.
Newsday saw two crews of scrap iron scavengers also reaping a harvest from the flood-hit river, one man lifting from the mud a child's bicycle plus a galvanise sheet.
Higher up the road near St Ann's Evangelical Bible Church, a crew from the Port of Spain City Corporation hosed down the road, even as lower down the road Newsday witnessed clouds of dust being raised up as cars drove over dried-out mud and two parked cars with windows thickly covered with dust, almost akin to ash-covered vehicles near volcanic eruptions.
Further up, by Batteau's residence, several men from the neighbourhood pondered the broken bridge – a concrete slab detached from two steel beams by raging river waters.
[caption id="attachment_905571" align="alignnone" width="1024"] A man salvages scrap iron from the St Ann's River on Thursday. - AYANNA KINSALE[/caption]
They said they were variously trying to help the river flow, as one man used a sledge hammer to try to break up the slab.
Resident Claude Charles told Newsday, "Things are moving a little too slow."
Neighbour Michael Thomas added, "Residents are coming out to help, but the real help he needs is from people in position."
He said the authorities should clear heavy debris from the river which could cause more havoc if heavy rain returned.
Another man said local MP, Energy Minister Stuart Young, and Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan had visited but he wished residents to be better notified by the authorities.
"The river was blocked up the road and the water swing back and took out part of the riverbank."
Newsday saw soil erosion reaching almost underneath the main road.
Herbalist Philip Franco, suffering a deluge of mud and plastic bottles, urged a widening of the Coblentz Avenue bridge and the imposition of a $5 deposit on each $5 bottled water sold to discourage littering, all to avert any future blocking and backing up of the river.
As Newsday left St Ann's, grey clouds drifted in, but fortunately within hours the Met Office's morning forecast of a "medium to high chance of isolated thunderstorm activity" on Thursday improved to "a low to medium chance" of showers on Friday.
 
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