Members of three families are appealing for assistance after a palm tree fell on the building they call home last Tuesday, damaging the roof and other parts along with furniture.
Tarpaulin placed on the roof did little to shield the family from Saturday’s downpour and 50-year-old Merle Franklin said while many persons were comfy under their sheets she was forced to spend the night crouched in a chair as her bed was soaked.
It was last week Tuesday morning that Franklin was relaxing in her bed at Lot 201 Freeman Street, East La Penitence when she heard a loud crash. Upon investigating she saw the palm tree that was on the dam next to the house on the ground and two of her grandchildren lying not too far away.
“One was bleeding, this lil one (pointing to a baby in her daughter’s arm) was bleeding and he sister was next to him crying,” Franklin said.
The woman said she quickly picked up the 18-month old boy and following the advice of neighbours she soaked him at the pipe and “he catch he self” The woman said she quickly rushed the children to the hospital and it was only after she returned home she realized how the uprooted tree had damaged her home.
While the little boy spent two days in the hospital for observation, he sustained a few scratches; his seven-year-old sister was released the same day with a fractured hand.
The two children live with their mother, Joan Junior, her reputed husband and their four other siblings in a small one-bedroom apartment. Their apartment is one of three joined on to a larger house at the front of the yard and while Franklin occupies the second apartment with her reputed husband, her mother, 69-year-old Elene Smith, occupies the third.
When Stabroek News visited the address yesterday all three apartments were wet and most of the occupants’ household items were piled up and covered in an effort to escape the rain that was coming through the roof. Buckets were also scattered around to catch the dripping water and in Smith’s home, a bucket half-filled with water was on her bed.
Most of Junior’s six children were huddled together on mattresses without sheets and she said it is a struggle to find food for them to eat as all of her foodstuff got wet and had to be discarded.
“All the foodstuff I had to throw dem away I can’t eat that, and look at the kitchen I cannot even cook because it wet, everything wet I can’t light fire in there,” the woman said as she surveyed her small humble home with all the furniture in a corner and a television set with a piece of wood lodged in the top sitting on a table.
“It is a piece of wood fall from the roof and bore the TV, it ent good anymore,” the woman said.
She said when the tragedy struck she was at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC) with another child who was hospitalized and only learnt of it when her mother took her two injured children for medical treatment.
“This thing really stressing me out because how we can live like this and look the rain coming again, we need help, we need help to move this tree,” the woman said as she looked at the pile of palm fruit and branches in front of her door.
The tree damaged the fence of the yard and according to the two women their washing that was on the lines in the yard is still buried under the tree.
“I don’t know how I living really, I have to go to work and so on but we need help, nobody out there can’t help we with something?” 50-year-old Franklin cried as she stood in the middle of her soaked home.
The woman said she is expected to tie the knot late August and lamented that most of the items she purchased for her special day are damaged and “money gone down the drain.”
“But I try to save me wedding dress, I had to move it and cover it up but I don’t know how long I could save it,” the woman said as she held up her lily white dress which was in plastic.
The family lamented that if it was not the rainy weather they would have fared better as at least their household items would not have been soaked with water.
“We just begging anyone to just help us because we need it, we really need the help, somebody, some organisation, anybody please help we,” Franklin pleaded.
Junior noted that three of her children are asthmatic and the condition under which they are now living would only aggravate their illness.
Franklin told Stabroek News it is not a case that her family is in the habit of asking for help as they are all working and provide for themselves but it is a case where tragedy has struck and they need help to “get back on we foot.
If is just to help fix back we roof so that rain wouldn’t wet when it fall we would be thankful.”