Mayaro, Rio Claro flood victims cry for help

Heavy rainfalls in Rio Claro and Mayaro early Sunday morning caused rivers to overflow and flood several homes.

Residents said it was one of the worst floods in recent years. They hope that officials like those of the Mayaro/Rio Claro Regional Corporation (MRCRC) who visited, make god on their promise to help.

At Agostini Village, 63-year-old Mazarun Ramsaroop was on the brink of tears as she cleaned her front yard.

"I don’t know when I will finish. All my yard fowls – about 40 – drowned. Flood water went inside my son’s car in the garage. The flood gone with some tables and destroyed two washing machines," Ramsaroop said.

"The water went all inside the house."

Next door, Jamie Flores, her common-law husband, Donald Ramsaroop, and their two children, Deklon, three, and Damek, seven, had no choice but to sit and wait until the water below their wooden house began to subside.

From 3 am, the rain started falling, accompanied by lightning and thunder, Flores said. The river, a short distance from the back of their home, broke its banks.

"Everything under the house is damaged. We could not leave the house until around 9 am when the water started to go down. We don’t know when we would finish clean up," Flores said.

"We lost two washing machines and a deep freeze."

Her husband said he braved the raging waters to let out the family’s ten dogs from a pen in the yard.

"They could have died. The whole pen was later covered with water," he said.

The couple is unemployed.

Shamilla Mohammed, 53, said she had been living in the area for the past 28 years.

"We had a wooden house, and now we are building a concrete one on the same spot. We never had flooding here until about three years ago," Mohammed said.

"My relatives came and are helping us clean."

Many affected residents told Newsday that floods worsened in the past four years after a villager renovated a property. They accused the owner of narrowing a watercourse.

The chairman of MRCRC, Raymond Cozier, told Newsday that the Ministry of Works has taken charge of that issue and a case is pending in the court.

Flood victims told him they are accustomed to flooding but Sunday’s was one of the worst they had experienced.

Newsday caught up with him at Agostini Village where he met with affected people.

"From Union, Mile End and Agostini I visited about 16 families. A team from disaster management unit is visiting homes and assisting. We (MRCRC) are giving out cleaning products. Some people lost their mattresses and we will be giving them new ones," Cozier said.

"We are hearing reports of flooding at the Guayaguayare Road in Rio Claro, Bucket corner, and we are heading that way to see for ourselves."

By midday, the water went down.