Minutes to midnight

Iman Alimool Rahim, left, with assistance from the Mafeking Masjid, distributing food items during the flooding. (Trinidad Guardian photo)

Worried about the heavy rains like thousands more residents, Jizzelle Baldwin kept trying to get home last Friday evening, but all the usual routes in Central Trinidad were already cut off. As the smelly, ochre waters rushed in from the turgid Caroni River nearby, swamping significant swathes of the fertile plain, her family decided to opt for the remaining Mon Plaisir road. Even in their sturdy Nissan Frontier, the young mother, her husband Chikara Todd and their nine-year-old son, Kayleb soon had a hard time navigating the inundated stretch.

Yet, they did not hesitate to help when they came across an abandoned car overtaken by the epic flood. Racing to the top of the road they spotted the former occupants, a bedraggled stranger struggling through the deluge clutching his three young children, scared, soaked and shivering in the cold. With the levels quickly rising around them, the four squeezed in. Suddenly there was no going back as the swells swirled in. Desperately searching for a higher area, they came to what looked like an abandoned parking lot, but it was blocked by a big, heavy iron gate.

Their rescued passenger Mark Gentle immediately jumped out. “I have never seen anything like it, Mark, he had superhuman strength” Baldwin marvelled in a recent television interview, “he pulled it and he pulled it and he pulled it until he ripped it out…”