"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 childre
