A teenaged boy is now nursing injuries after the walls of his bedroom came crashing down on him during a violent storm in Aishalton, Region Nine on Friday night.
Approximately six families have been displaced as the 30-minute storm completely destroyed their homes “within seconds”.
Speaking with the Sunday Stabroek yesterday, village Toshao Micheal Thomas, who visited the homes to assess the damage, stated that such a storm has never been experienced before. The tornado-like storm, he explained, began with a sudden lightning flash and moved through the village, picked up and flung things in its path.
This newspaper was told that at the time of the storm, Tiweppa, the 14-year-old, was lying in bed with his pillow covering his head when the clay bricks from his bedroom walls started falling on him. Tiweppa blacked out as a result of the impact and his father promptly removed the bricks from atop his son and took him to safety. The injured boy was soon rushed to the hospital where he was attended to by a doctor and regained consciousness. Despite being reported as being “fine”, this newspaper understands that up to press time yesterday Tiweppa was still experiencing shortness of breath at intervals.
Thomas told the Sunday Stabroek that on the property of the teenager and his family were two houses: one made of clay bricks and a galvanised roof and the other of ite leaves. He went on to recount that on the night of the storm the brick house was damaged while the locally-made one was unaffected. The same result was seen with other houses in the village where modern houses were in close proximity to traditional abodes.
“One family’s house was torn apart within three seconds [while] another family who has a lot of land space and fruit trees and two houses in the yard lost their entire property… all the fruits [and] even the coconuts fell to the ground,” the Toshao said.
He added that the roofs of some houses were blown completely off “like a kite with frame” up to 50 metres from their places of origin. One house, he told the Sunday Stabroek, was even split in half by the storm.
According to Thomas, the families affected by the storm are currently being housed in a makeshift camp and their houses will need to be rebuilt. After assessing the damage, the Village Council, he said, estimates that it will take about $3m to rebuild one house completely with all of the amenities.
Up to press time the Council was hoping to make contact with Minister within the Ministry of Housing Susan Rodrigues, who was in Region Nine. They plan on appealing to the Ministry for swift action to rebuild the homes of the displaced families. The families, Thomas said, comprise of five to six members each including children.
