Hurricane victim gets double whammy

The story of hurricane Keith can be told in broad strokes: the quantity of buildings destroyed, the dollar value of the damage and number of people homeless. But the real story of the storm lies in the hundreds of personal dramas which played out in the lives of ordinary citizens. Today News Five visited a structure in Port Loyola that somehow functions as the home of Therese Felix.

Therese Felix, Hurricane Victim

“Sunday afternoon after dinner, I told my common law husband that it’s time for us to leave and go to Belmopan. He didn’t really want to leave, it seems that the preferred to stay, but I told him I think it’s better for us to go to Belmopan. Me, my six children and him left in his taxi, he’s a taxi man, and went to Belmopan to protect ourselves from this weather. We reached Belmopan, by my sister’s house Mrs. Lambey. Coming back–my husband came back to get the TV and radio and things–on our way back to Belize City, we caught somewhere between miles 38 and 34 in an accident.”

Stewart Krohn, Reporting

Therese’s husband and several of her children were admitted to Belmopan Hospital with minor injuries. But that’s only half of the story. While waiting in the nation’s capital she heard on the radio that the Felix house in Belize City had collapsed.

Therese Felix

“When I came home, as I was coming around the lane, the first thing I saw, was that you can peep right through. I never cried then, because my son was with me. He and his friends went and I sat down inside and I cried, because having six children and only one person working in the household, is hard. I went and I didn’t take any school uniform, school books, nothing and to come back and having to go through the same thing again, in less that one or two months time, that’s hard.”

Stewart Krohn

“So everything’s gone?”

Therese Felix

“Everything destroyed.”

Felix told news Five that she owns her lot and will try to qualify for a home under government’s housing scheme.