Today marks one week since the Chance family were ejected from their one-room shack by flood waters brought on by Tropical Storm Bret.
The life of the seven members of the family have changed drastically since then.
Now, Ramrajie Chance, 31, her five young children and her common-law husband, Sameer Ali, have hope that they may be allocated a Housing Development Corporation (HDC) house. Chance is pregnant with her sixth child.
The family had to be rescued by their neighbours when rising flood waters swept through their home on Sunrees Road, Penal, on Tuesday, trapping them inside.
They were taken to the La Costena Activity Centre in Penal and have been housed there since. They have received assistance in the form of food, clothes and toys from concerned members of the public and the Penal/Debe Regional Corporation and are mostly comfortable at the shelter.
Chance had said earlier this week that she could not return to the one-room house with her children as the family’s outhouse was filled with water and the galvanise roof and walls were still shifting with the wind. She feared that scorpions, caimans and snakes would pose a greater threat to the children in the aftermath of the storm.
She had said the family was being evicted from the centre but the president of the La Costena Village Council Satnarine Ramcharan told the T&T Guardian yesterday the group is not being evicted as they empathise with them.
On Saturday, Housing Minister Randall Mitchell told the T&T Guardian HDC would visit the family and conduct an assessment to see if they could be granted emergency relief.
That team, led by the HDC’s Social Department manager, Maria Mc Cleve visited the Chance’s Sunrees Road, Penal home yesterday.
In an interview yesterday, HDC chairman Newman George said, “They are doing an assessment and an evaluation and just having a chat to see what the family require. And although tomorrow is a holiday, we will ask Mc Cleve to come in and give us her report.
“We will try to do our duty and assist in any way that we can, we will inform the minister and see what we can do from there.”
A hopeful Ali told the T&T Guardian yesterday that a HDC house will give the young children a proper home to grow up in. “I have a little hope that things might work out, it’s not really for me, I live my life already,” he said.
“I done live my life and I will just be happy to see the children get somewhere comfortable to live.”
If that fails, Ali said he would be grateful for the donation of building materials to rebuild the small house.
“At the end of it, your own is your own, no matter how small. If we don’t get through with this, although it would be so much better for the children, I will try to patch up the house and we could go back to it.”