Police Officer loses everything to raging waters

Despite the loss of her home and all her belongings to a raging river, Constable Kimberly Lewis is grateful that there was no loss of life resulting from Monday’s flash flooding in Georgetown.{{more}}

Lewis, who is stationed at the Biabou Police Station, told Searchlight that she was at work when she received the dreaded call from her mother that their family home was under water.

“All my mother could tell me is that she heard a rumbling and when she awoke she saw water in the house; and that was upstairs.”

The house is a two-storey house.

“That means that the downstairs was completely flooded. Then she took up the kids and then she went out of the house and that’s when she saw the water was as high as the house.”

The officer said that she then received permission to head home, but was slowed down by the many road blocks that she encountered in the form of landslides.

Her determination to get to her family was evident by her decision to walk to Georgetown from New Grounds where she got a ride.

Upon reaching the blocked Mount Young Bridge, Lewis crossed the river at Black Point beach and made her way to her Langley Park home where she was reunited with family members and tried to salvage items from her home.

When she had completed that task, she proceeded to assist her next door neighbour who had suffered a similar fate..

Lewis said her personal situation could have been worse, since her sister who lives downstairs with her three children was also at work at the time of the flash flood.

“She would have slept downstairs with her kids. The kids were upstairs sleeping. When she is working the children would sleep upstairs…. me and my parents and my other sister and brother live upstairs.”

The officer of five years acknowledged the fact that the home is very close to the edge of the river, but like most residents, believed that the river defenses would have prevented any damage to her home.

As for the future, Lewis said that she is uncertain as to where things will go.

Currently housed at the Langley Park Government School with others who lost their home, she said that the family intends to take it one day at a time and see where the situation goes, and is grateful that no lives are lost.

“We have a roof over our heads, we are being fed, we are waiting for word as to how the future will progress.

“I am grateful that there are no deaths, though many villagers were trapped in their homes. I am thankful; at least they survived.”