An exporter of exotic animals is counting her losses, which she says run into the millions, after a freak storm on Monday afternoon severely damaged a part of her business office and the cages in which she houses the animals causing quite a few of them to escape.
Violet Mohanlall of Lot 10 Timehri Public Road told Stabroek News she received a call shortly before 2 pm on Monday, from her employees informing her that “a whirlwind”, originating from the nearby Demerara River, had hit her business establishment damaging the cages of animals which subsequently escaped.
“I was plucking chicken to feed the animals around 1.30 time when suddenly the place start to get dark dark dark,” Linda Sugrim, an employee related. “Then suddenly, like in them picture [films], this wind like a tornado start fuh come out of the river and everything start tumbling. It happen so quick all I could do was run.”
She said she and other employees sought cover and from safety, bewilderedly watched as the whirlwind ripped though the business establishment. “We couldn’t do nothing I tell you. Nothing. This whole thing happened so quickly, last for about ten minutes. But when it done it was madness; the animals gone here, there and everywhere. The birds like they glad, cause most of them, from the time the cage open, they gone flying, ” she added.
Mohanlall exports primates, snakes and a variety of birds to various countries.
She said the cage with the snakes was not damaged as such, she was confident that they were all accounted for. However, quite a few species of monkeys and most of her birds are missing.
“I don’t know what to do. Right now I am still in shock. I can only say the damage is millions, but to give an exact figure I would have to do an inventory but God it’s a lot,” the distraught woman said. She added that four structures measuring approximately 100 ft by 120 ft were destroyed. “This had to be some kind of tornado because the buildings weren’t no pagaly buildings they were made to strict regulations and seemed solid to us,” she added.
Yesterday afternoon the Mohanlalls and their employees were busy trying to rebuild temporary shelters for the animals that were saved and were cleaning up the debris. They said that one of the setbacks in the rebuilding process was that given the proximity of the business to the river, most of the materials from the structures blew into the water and disappeared.
