The denuded hills along the narrow, winding Paria Main Road, leading to the rural fishing villages of Grand Riviere and Matelot a week after the communities were cut off by fallen trees, landslides and overflowing rivers, still pose a real risk with every rainfall.
Last Wednesday, a Sunday Newsday team went into the communities to witness first hand how the villagers were coping after scores of homes were flooded with water as much as five-feet high in some cases.
At Matelot at least three homes were untouched after major landslips and rock slides sent tonnes of dirt crashing down. One two-storey house is just about three-feet away from sliding down a hill as a landslide toppled coconut trees and other plants.
[caption id="attachment_964170" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Amos Kirton shows the landslide propping on his home in Matelot on July 6. - AYANNA KINSALE[/caption]
The homeowners, who don't have legal titles for lands passed down to them by generations, are pleading for any assistance to save their homes from total destruction.
Venezuelan Nice Quijada, 42, who lives with his wife, Jenny, and their five-year-old daughter Naysha, a short distance from the Grand Riviere River, lost everything and were lucky to come out alive after they climbed on the roof of their home to escape torrents of water which flooded his area in less than five minutes after the river breached its banks on three occasions.
Quijada, a chef, who once worked at the iconic Acajou resort nearby, said he also managed to save his dog, Charlie, who crawled into a ball on the roof. He said his family was trapped on the roof as no one could venture in nor could they walk out as the water rose over six-feet on the roadway.
He said the water subsided in about an hour and he was still cleaning his home. Quijada said he was grateful for the assistance of CEPEP crew who helped power wash the house and the donations of a sofa set and two mattress. In his yard, pieces of carpet and mats were still drying. The family's pet parrot managed to survive to clinging on to the very top of the five-foot cage.
[caption id="attachment_964176" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The rustic Mt Plasir hotel located on the shoreline of the Grand Riviere bay is facing a threat of the ocean as a significant portion of the shoreline was washed away by floods on June 29. - AYANNA KINSALE[/caption]
At the world famous Grand Riviere turtle nesting site the devastation of almost 20 feet of shoreline was jarring.
Thousands of unhatched leatherback turtle eggs and hatchlings were devoured by the raging Grand Riviere and Ferdinand rivers which flooded the shoreline on June 29, the day after a tropical storm narrowly missed landfall on TT.
Vice president of the Grand Riviere Turtle Trust Len Peters in a telephone interview on Friday said two of the four zones were affected by the overflowing rivers. He said apart from logs and other vegetation which were deposited on zones one and two, 2,400 metres of prime turtle nesting site remain unaffected.
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