Trapped and terrified

For Aneita Williams, the night Hurricane Melissa tore through Jamaica will forever haunt her.

Trapped inside her flooded home in The Estuary, a housing scheme in Friendship, St James, she came face to face with death as water mixed with sewage surged through every room.

Williams was among several families in Phase Two of the National Housing Trust (NHT) development who found themselves imprisoned by floodwaters on October 28, when the historic Category Five hurricane slammed into Jamaica with winds of 185 miles per hour. The nearby pond had overflowed its banks, spilling a toxic mix of sewage and stormwater into homes and cutting off all escape routes.

“When the rains started to fall, I was drying up water, and while I was drying the water, I wasn’t paying any attention to the pond ‘cause I’ve never been flooded before,” she recollected in an interview with The Sunday Gleaner.

“The water closed the back door and water closed the front door, so there was no way to come out of this house. So while I was in there, trying to figure out how long it’s going to take me to die, although God did say mi naa guh drown, … but mi did still a fret,” a still-traumatised Williams recalled before later breaking down.

Water quickly rose inside the community, filling her house. Williams said she called out to a man known as ‘Bread Man’, who trudged through the floodwaters but struggled to get to her.

“I gave him the key, but he couldn’t find the lock. When he found the lock, he couldn’t find the hole. And when he found the hole, he couldn’t turn. All this time, the water was filling up in the house.”

Another neighbour, who had escaped through an ungrilled bathroom window, went back into his flooded home to fetch pliers to free her.

However, she said at one point, after struggling with the pliers to loosen the first bolt, she called to three men who had tried to assist her and said “A it dis,” before the second bolt finally came off, allowing her to escape.

“They need to relocate us. NHT need to find somewhere and put everybody that lives down here. They cannot want to think to keep us down here. That nuh mek nuh sense,” the mother of one said.

Since the hurricane, Williams has been staying with her pastor. Everything inside her house – furniture, clothes, appliances – remains soaked or destroyed.

“Dem need fi move de people. De water come over the bank, why yuh think it naa go come over the retaining wall?” she asked when asked whether she believed a retaining wall would help.

Reacting to the Government’s announced relief measures, including a $500,000 grant and a $3.5-million home improvement loan, Williams, while welcoming the grant, said the loan is not feasible for mortgagors.

“How dem a go pay it,” she asked, pointing out that she would not be able to provide for herself and her son if she were to take on another home loan.

Two weeks after the storm, The Estuary remains a landscape of ruin – mud, debris, waterlogged furniture, and the overpowering stench of sewage. Williams and her neighbours say the pond behind their homes has long been a source of worry and blame it squarely for their disaster.

“It wasn’t just Melissa. The pond rose up and took over everything, and what came in wasn’t just rainwater, it was sewage,” she said.

Williams added that the area where they live also naturally collects water when it rains.

During the hurricane and in its immediate aftermath, floodwaters had trapped many families inside their homes.

“Neighbours had to use machetes to chop through doors and pull people out, including a woman with three children. One lady had three children and her husband. They had to use something to break out the bathroom window, and that’s only because the grille man didn’t return to put in the grille,” Williams added.

Bread Man, she recalled, also assisted another family by chopping out a hole in the top of their door with a machete.

Relocate families

to safer ground

Williams is urging the Government to relocate families to safer ground.

“We need to be move to a more secure place where we can live, work, and raise our children comfortably,” she insisted.

“Unless it’s a case where we just want body counts and we just want people to die, sure. If this storm came in the night, we’d have more statistics adding to what is already existing in this country,” she said, as her voice trailed off heavy with emotion.

Arthur Barris, who has lived in Phase Two for three years, described the chaos as sudden and terrifying.

“Two minutes after mi come home from work, water was already in my house. By mi look through the window, a di water mi see a run a come, and by me a reach back door the water up, a di hill wi affi use. Everybody had to run to the hills, me, my wife, and even a man with a baby. It was so frightening,” he said.

Barris said they were never informed or knew about the pond when they bought their homes.

“The pond comes over and brings disaster. Once it overflows, the sewage and mud come right back up into the houses,” he said.

Seeking compensation from the National Housing Trust (NHT) has been another ordeal. Barris said he and his wife were told they needed an evaluation of the damage by an NHT-approved evaluator within a month. He called that “rubbish” and criticised the agency for not providing a list of approved evaluators.

Furthermore, he said he was first told to take pictures of the damage, but after doing so, was later asked to provide a bank statement and to obtain an evaluator – requirements he finds “quite annoying and unnecessary.”

For a long-term solution, Barris suggests a retaining wall and a flood-warning system similar to those used in urban centres.

Not all residents agree with relocation. Schadane Grant, another homeowner, said the community could be saved with proper engineering.

“There must be another way,” he said, pointing to the lack of a channel to divert water away from the pond safely.

Grant was among the few spared from the worst of the flooding. He had planned to ride out the storm at home but decided the last minute to stay elsewhere. When he returned, much of his house was intact, though his neighbours’ were destroyed.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Melissa ripped up roads in another section of the scheme, causing a section to collapse, creating a deep crater and several cracks, affecting at least five homes on either side, restricting access.

Susan, who lives near a section of collapsed road, said she fears it will widen. “If yuh notice, it a come up further and further, so we nuh know if we soon going get barricaded,” she said. “It wasn’t like that – it was just a little crack. Then it start open up. Everybody come, but dem don’t know where to start.”

She said she was told that power may not return on her avenue until next year, as the wiring cannot be fixed until the road is repaired. She also fears the crater will expand further.

“If yuh notice, it a come up further and further, so we nuh know if we soon going get barricaded,” she said. “It wasn’t like that, it was just a likkle crack, then it start open up. It did a go da way, then it stop and start come da way yah. Everybody come, but nothing much, because dem don’t know where to start,” she added.

Barris, in the meantime, is pleading for help from the authorities. “Mi know a nuh wi one go through di storm but trust mi dis avenue was a devastation and we would a really love some help, so dem can push out and see wat dem can do cause nuff a we deven have no bed, and as you can see everything wet and dem tings ya cause cholera,” he said.

Meanwhile, Williams reported that a team from the NHT visited the scheme on Friday and took reports from residents, promising updates next week.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com