Recovery work continues tonight in bullet tree as waters have further receded and most residents are back in their homes. Since Tuesday we’ve been bringing you stories from the hard hit village where 25 families have lost their homes and hundreds more are damaged. Tonight we’ll take you into the homes of Arcelito Manzanero and Abbymael Cruz.
Arcelito Manzanero, Flood Victim – Bullet Tree
“I was not here in the time that the flood begin. I was just working down in Caves Branch and then when I came in I just heard what was happening here. I just started to fight it, when I came here I saw the water just coming up and started to just rise up and then I started to get in shape and movement to do what I could until now. Thank God we are still alive. You see I got this upstairs, it is not finished but I lost some lumber that I was building and inside my woman lost what was inside the kitchen.
Thanks to God because we have done the best we could up to this time and we are trying to keep positive and see what we could do. In the first place it is very sad, myself I could see it and I see the sadness on the rest of the people that get this hurt.”
Abbymael Cruz, Flood Victim – Bullet Tree
“We got affected very bad by this flooding. We did not expect this water to come so high and like you see, we have sofa sets and beds got affected. The mattresses we try to put it on higher ground and the stove and everything got affected very bad. After the flooding we came in yesterday and saw the house it was very thick with mud, the walls, the floor, and all the things that were damaged. We tried to wash it yesterday. We washed out all the mud and cleaned up so that is how we got to clean up the house a little bit.”
William Swan, DEMO
“What we’re doing is we have the assessment team that is right here now. We are doing the assessments and we will see the needs and things that the people they lost, we will do assessments with the crops and all the household stuff and we will do a valuation and see what we can help them with.”
Those assessments continue and the results will be forwarded to NEMO.
