Pensioner contemplates future after roof collapses

A 79-year-old Bathsheba, St Joseph resident is wondering how she will pick up the pieces after a section of her home’s roof caved in during Thursday’s freak storm.

Hilda Cooke told a Barbados TODAY roving team that she was awoken by rolling thunder and had to seek shelter elsewhere as her roof became unstable.

“I was asleep and I hear the big rumbling so I jump up and told the children that I wanna get out of in here because the rooftop was coming off, so we tried to get out and come down here at my son,” she recalled.

“Tell the truth, I didn’t even look at the time. I was so anxious to get out of the house….Inside the house doesn’t have much damage but…the top is what is really gone.”

The pensioner lamented that the house she shared with her daughter and grandson was now unliveable and she had no insurance or any other means of paying for the roof to be replaced.

When asked what her next move would be, Cooke said the future was uncertain.

“It’s hard losing your home so like this…I lived through Hurricane Janet and never experienced nothing like this from Janet….All those storms I went through and I never had to run out of the house, not till now,” she said.

In the meantime, Cooke said she would be staying with her son who lives at a property just behind her damaged home. (KB)