Nanette Cuffy is thanking God that although she was left homeless in the aftermath of Hurricane Tomas, she still has life.{{more}}

Cuffy, like many other residents in Chester Cottage, a village in the north east of St. Vincent, lost the roof of her house.

“I was lying down and then I felt rain. When I looked up I saw the roof blowing off,” Cuffy recalled.

“We didn’t get to do anything, we only pull some clothes,” the woman explained.

“It (the wind) came so fast we had to run.”

Cuffy, her two sons and her 80-year-old mother lived in the small abode.

Her mother and elder son have since relocated to Barrouallie, but Cuffy and the second of her two sons have joined the forty or so others at the overcrowded Chester Cottage Community Learning Centre, the designated emergency shelter for that community.

“We are all trying to cope,” she told SEARCHLIGHT.

Likewise, the roof of the home of Linkilus Washington-Jones was completely torn off.

Jones told SEARCHLIGHT that he and four other individuals were in the house cooking sometime around 8 pm on Saturday.

“Den de whole roof just walk way,” Jones said.

He was one of the more fortunate ones to be offered temporary accommodations with a relative.

Other residents of Chester Cottage told SEARCHLIGHT that the area was seriously affected by the heavy winds.

Rochelle Caine, mother of four, was also coping with the inconvenience of having to relocate into the one habitable room of her house, after a section of the roof of her house blew off.

“I lost a lot of things including all my documents,” Caine said. (DD)