Trinis in Texas survive snowstorm

Malia Ramroop, five, and her sister Malini Ramroop, six, make snow angels in the yard of their San Antonio, Texas, home. Their parents Melissa Singh-Ramroop and Rohan Ramroop have Trinidadian roots and told Newsday about their experiences during the Texas snowstorm last week. PHOTO COURTESY RAMROOP FAMILY
Malia Ramroop, five, and her sister Malini Ramroop, six, make snow angels in the yard of their San Antonio, Texas, home. Their parents Melissa Singh-Ramroop and Rohan Ramroop have Trinidadian roots and told Newsday about their experiences during the Texas snowstorm last week. PHOTO COURTESY RAMROOP FAMILY

While the worst is over for some parts of Texas affected by the snowstorm, several Trinidadian expatriates recalled the challenges they faced to survive the brutal conditions.

Last week, severe snowstorms hit several states in the southern and midwestern US, including Texas, New Orleans, Kentucky, Illinois and Ohio.

A CNN article on Friday reported that while conditions have improved in some parts of Texas, heavy snowfall continued in some areas and were expected to spread to the east coast over the weekend.

Speaking with Newsday on Sunday, Melissa Singh-Ramroop who lives with her husband Ronan Ramroop and their two children in San Antonio, said as of Sunday morning, the snowfall had eased and sunshine returned to her neighbourhood.

She said despite power outages and disruptions in the water supply, she and her family were able to rally out the storm.

“We lost power on Monday and it didn’t come back until Thursday morning, so when the power went a lot of the homes in Texas aren’t equipped for this kind of weather so the houses became just as cold as the outside.

“As we were dealing with the power outage something happened to the water and the pressure got low so we had to fill bathtubs with snow from outside to flush our toilets and so on. This is something we’ve never had to deal with before and even up to today there’s a boil-water notice for some parts of the State.”

Singh-Ramroop was born in the US, but has Trinidadian parents.

She lived in New York before moving to Texas, and said the recent snowstorms were more powerful than anything she experienced in New York, but was grateful for the support of communities who lent assistance to neighbours in need. When the snowstorm began a lot of people panicked and those who could head to the stores cleaned out all of the shelves so even now a lot of the shelves are empty in the stores, but neighbours and churches really pitched in and helped.

“A lot of the homes here have fireplaces so the neighbours would have helped out by offering firewood to those that didn’t have and I know the churches have been very active in distributing meals for people who don’t have any supplies.” She said throughout the difficulties her family made the most of it and she told her daughters Malini, six and Malia, five, to pretend as if they were camping on days when there was no power.

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"Trinis in Texas survive snowstorm"

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