News

Children lost during floods

By WANDEKA GAYLE, Staff Reporter

FOR MANY, HURRICANE Ivan is fast becoming a distant memory, but for 24-year-old Rebecca Wilson of Portland Cottage, Clarendon, it is stamped in her memory as the night her children were ripped from her life forever.

Where once she had three children, two-year-old Lissan, four-year-old Tiffany and six-year-old Jerome, Rebecca tearfully revealed that fateful Friday night when Ivan struck left her with one child - her only son.

She explained that Ivan's powerful winds and rising sea water caused her, her 'babyfather', Uroy Thompson, 32, their children and nine others, to flee their homes in Salt Pond to higher ground within Portland Cottage

But it was too late for Lissan, Tiffany and several others as a fierce sea surge swept them clear off the ground and flung them into a pond several feet away where they drowned.

"We just see the water come out of nowhere and box we off the road," Rebecca said, pausing to suppress fresh tears. "I was carrying the baby (Lissan) and even when the water come down I was still holding unto her. Uroy did have Jerome and Tiffany and they were screaming."

Uroy told THE STAR it was not long before they could only make out the distinct sound of Jermone's voice.

"Mi hear Jerome screaming out, "Daddy mi a drown! Daddy mi a drown!" Uroy said, adding that he kept grasping his neck. "Rebecca did still hold on to the baby and me haffi tell her sey di baby drown but she would not let her go. That time the water cover me four time and mi know dem couldn't survive."

Rebecca said that she was not even sure how she made it out alive, "I was more floating than swimming and I just couldn't find di bottom," she said.

"Is like we were there for more than four hours," Uroy chimed in, "It was not until one o'clock in the morning when we get rescue." He added that community members had to come to their aid.

"When mi see dem is like the water come down but mi still go towards them but to how the way the waves high and the zinc dem did a fly we couldn't do much right away," 24-year-old Wayne Beadle told THE STAR. "When we see the crowd we go out there and people start dive in and try help them. Me try help some too but we couldn't save the baby dem because di water was too high."

Beadle added that after the rescue, which lasted into the wee hours of the morning, the survivors were taken to a two-storey house, "We did have to go back and forth but it was hard because it was dark," he said.

"I don't know how we survive, must be God de pon wi side," Uroy said holding his son close to him.

He told THE STAR that his heart breaks when he finds Rebecca in tears and his son always queries after his siblings.

"Sometimes Jerome would come and sey, "Dem really drown fi true daddy?" he said, admitting that he did not know how to console his son.

The family is now left to pick up the pieces, literally, as 'Ivan' also demolished their home and business.

"We don't have no house, the snack shop gone," Uroy said, "But mi jus' cyan't stop and look around idle. Mi haffi try rebuild." He told THE STAR that he used the several pieces of lumber torn from his home during the hurricane to rebuild his snack shop. Once a fisherman, he now has to employ new means of livelihood.

And while he sleeps in the skeleton of their wooden shop with a plastic sheeting as a roof and Rebecca sleeps at a sister's one-room house, cramped with nine other people, their greatest concern is that they may never be able to bury their children right away. "We don't have no money to bury dem," he said. "We would really love help with that."