Mud fills woman’s home

"Miss yuh can gwan up deh guh look, di whole a mi house gone," Terri-Ann Murray shouted to me as I walked along the wrecked Weise Road in Bull Bay, St Andrew.

The damage caused from Sunday's rainfall reminded me of some of the pictures from the 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti back in 2010.

But that still didn't prepare me for the devastation Murray and her neighbours are facing. The nail technician gave spine chilling details of the horror that transpired on Sunday afternoon.

"Mi go up di road and when mi a come back, mi see water a run off a the gully and mi say yuh know say da gully deh a go buss. Mi go tell mi neighbour and come back a draw a ply to give mi nephew to put at the front a di house and go around the back to bar the back door. By the time mi reach round deh, mi hear 'boodum boom boom' and stone and everything a fling and a lick dung di place," she said.

Murray said the troubled Chalky River had once again paid her an unwelcome visit and she had to jump her back fence to escape its wrath. I sat with Murray on a wet mattress in her living room, and she pointed to where her sofa and other furniture were buried under the rubble. With the mud rising to about 10 feet, I could touch the ceiling while still seated.

Was not overreacting

As I crawled into the kitchen praying that the roof would not cave in, I realised Murray was not overreacting when she stated that she had lost everything. Her stove and refrigerator were partially buried and the damage was far worse in her bedroom.

"Mi see a lady a tell mi to put on mi mask earlier and a pity she don't even know that I literally don't have anything ... not even a mask," she said.

Member of Parliament for St Andrew East Rural, Juliet Holness, said she has had recent discussions with the National Works Agency (NWA), and that workers are in the process of getting gabion baskets for the area.

"Persons will indicate that they used to have the grind which is a meshing that stones are laid in and although they don't want to hear it, I can tell them that they have removed a lot of the stones from the grind. The particular effort at remedying the problem over the past two months has not been effective because this really requires tens of thousands of truckloads to remove the total silt out of the water," she said.

She stated that the nearby Carib Cement Company has also committed to assisting with the removal of the silt.