A freak storm roared through the tiny community of Swan on the Linden/Soesdyke Highway on Saturday flattening fragile homes, toppling trees and ripping roofs off buildings, leaving several residents including some with young children, traumatised and without a roof over their heads.
The residents, many of whom struggle to get by, are pleading for assistance. Yesterday, they were still fearful that another sudden storm could wreak further havoc in the area, which is tucked behind Marudi. Stabroek News visited the community yesterday where some families were just beginning to pick up the pieces of their tiny homes which were flattened by the storm, which lasted for an hour. Even some partially built houses suffered severe damage with some having their roofs blown off. Some latrines were upturned.
In an indication of the strength of the storm, vegetation in some parts faced one direction while scores of uprooted trees and shrubs lined the pathways.
The residents said that they had no idea that there was even going to be rain on Saturday since the weather was “scorching” with little or no clouds. “It was extremely hot, you didn’t even want to come outside yesterday but then all of a sudden, this big dark cloud came out of nowhere,” Herman Williams, a resident, related. With the dark clouds came a drop in the temperature but then the catastrophic winds began and rapidly strengthened.
“It was about 4:30 (pm) time we hear the big breeze was coming and after then the rain and the breeze came out of the blue. It was hot with no breeze and this cloud just keep coming up and coming and then all of a sudden the wind come fast, fast and we start hearing the trees them breaking,” Williams recounted.
She said she was in her yard when the menacing clouds heralded the high winds. After the winds started to rush through the village and hearing the sounds of trees cracking and breaking, Williams retreated to her home.
“We look out and seeing the breeze come like circle breeze and I was very, very scared,” she recalled. With the strong winds came a torrential downpour of rain. Williams said the unprecedented rainfall flooded parts of the community which are not prone to floods.
“The road was like a creek and when the breeze blow was pure waves and all them fowls and suh de just fluttering up,” she related. However, she said, after the rains stopped, the water quickly receded but left destruction in its wake. A house that her sister had been constructing for a year next to her was completely leveled.
Williams pointed out that the house was near to being completed but now they would have to start over as the building was completely destroyed by the winds.
Another resident, Faneeza (only name given), had to run through the heavy rains to escape as her house began to rock and crack while she and her children were inside. She related to Stabroek News that she had to grab her three little children and run to her sister’s house, which was about 100 feet away.
“After the rain started falling hard, hard and the wind start shake the house, the children them start to get frighten and I hear it cracking and so I grab them and I run through the rain cause I don’t know what (was going) to happen,” the still traumatised woman recounted.
Minutes after reaching safety in her sister’s house, Faneeza looked out the window and saw the zinc from her little home flying. Soon after, the entire house was ripped apart. While no one was injured, the woman related that several electronic appliances were destroyed and she is now forced to live with the father of her children, from whom she had separated after encountering domestic problems.
Meantime, Shirley Nazeer told Stabroek News that she and her five children were forced to flee their house after the storm toppled her bathroom and destroyed several posts leaving her house leaning on one side.
While some residents were able to flee their quaking houses during the storm, Evan Lucy and her nine children were forced to stay in theirs even as the roof of their home was being violently ripped off and tossed almost a hundred feet away by the winds.
“It was a disaster and look how the house fall apart but I had to run back inside when it all de happening because I de frighten the zinc fly back and knock some of us,” Lucy said. The woman recounted that after the roof was ripped off and her children panicked in fear, they all huddled in a corner and prayed that nothing else would be torn off from the house.
Lucy’s home is currently without a roof and while she was able to take her children to her mother to spend the night, she pointed out that she is going to “bear through” at the home without a roof.
The woman related that she is unsure when they would be able to repair the house as it is not hers. She is renting it and does not have enough money since she does not work.
Deo Persaud, the man who owns the house, told Stabroek News that he used to live in the building but had returned to his Lusignan, East Coast Demerara home to take care of his mother. “I was at home and I looked at the southern side and I see the cloud and I tell me wife that this thing ain’t look too nice and it got a disaster look about it,” Persaud said. He recalled that it was a little over an hour later that he received a call informing him that his house had been ripped apart.
Persaud said while his first instinct was to reach the area and assess the damage in order to repair the house, the destruction was so severe that it was not a simple and cost-effective matter as he had initially thought. “I came and see the damage and I can’t repair it now because I don’t have money in hand,” he said.
In addition to residents’ homes, other concrete houses that were partially constructed throughout the village were also destroyed. Residents said that they are in need of assistance and are pleading with the authorities to visit the village to see their plight. Up to late yesterday, no one in authority had visited, Stabroek News was told.
