As we showed you last night several flood victims are moving out of the shelters and back into their homes. Oscar Palacios is one of them. He left the
shelter yesterday morning with his family. But the state of his house isn't any better than the shelter, in fact as you saw it's way worse. He and his
family only have a few dry clothes and sheets and almost no food supply. This is the situation with many families especially with those living on
Antelope Street Extension and other areas nearby like Jerusalem. So what is being done to assist these needy families? Well, a part from the
coordinated response and relief plan that NEMO is working on, the UDP Area Representative for Collett Patrick Faber told us today that he and his team
have already helped out some families in his area.
Patrick Faber - Area Representative, Collet
"When the flood happened early Sunday morning, we were out. In fact I was the one who opened the shelter late Saturday night. We were out trying to
signal to people that they should move to the shelter if in fact they were on safe ground in terms of the flooding. People decided, most people at that
time that they would stay, that it wasn't that bad. But by Sunday morning early of course you know that situation changed."
"What we did in the immediate aftermath of the flooding, is we delivered groceries packages. A thousand groceries packages were delivered, we also
created; you remember the south side feeding programme for schools is located in Collet on Magazine Road. Remember on that Monday we did not have
school so we utilized the kitchen and we prepared meals to deliver in the constituency for those affected by the flooding. We distributed blankets and
we distributed clothing and we were there to meet the immediate needs. Over the last couple of days we also encouraged them to come in and to register
the damage caused by the flood and the rains at our office. We have in excess of 500 such assessments, we sent out small contractors over the last
couple of days as well to just verify that this is the true damage."
He told us that most of these families living in the Jerusalem area are squatters and that nothing much can be done to upgrade the infrastructure.
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