Tubal students help hurricane victim by constructing home

We have featured the plight of many hurricane victims who have desperately sought assistance to rebuild their lives. Hattieville resident, Therese Livingston, was one of the persons who lost everything. In an emotional interview, she told News Five that her mobile home was flipped and totaled by hurricane Richard’s winds. Livingston also told us that she exhausted all avenues to find help, but to no avail. That is until her story was heard on November third and today more than thirty students from the Tubal Trade and Vocational Institute answered her call and started construction on her new house. News Five’s Delahnie Bain met an overwhelmed Livingston today.

Delahnie Bain, Reporting

When we first visited Therese Livingston we found her mobile home and everything in it completely destroyed. It was a week and a half after hurricane Richard and she broke down in tears, frustrated that no one would answer her calls for assistance.

Therese Livingston, Hurricane Victim (File: November 3^rd, 2010)

“Nobody is taking on what I suffer, nobody. And I appreciate what you all doing for me because I went everywhere and it’s like I don’t even feel like I’m alive and then it’s so sad that people are capitalizing on other people’s loss. They don’t know what you are feeling inside. They are just taking advantage of the situation and getting things that they don’t even deserve. And people out here need things but oh they are just having fun.”

But today it was a completely different scene as students from Tubal Trade and Vocational Institute began work on Livingston’s new home.

Lyndon Bailey, C.E.O., Tubal Trade & Vocational Institute

“We from Tubal, we saw the clip on Channel Five with Miss Therese how her mobile home was blown away by the hurricane and we decided to take it on as a project; the school along with Amen Ministry out of Canada. We had just received a container of some ply wood and some material like lumber and stuff like that and we decided that we want to help this lady.”

Therese Livingston

“That was the answer for me and I was so happy I said God thanks that Channel Five took it on themselves to help me and it came through for me that day. and I appreciate all that you have done for me.  I appreciate it. Ooh you know how happy—I noh might look happy but in my heart I am so happy that I know that my God is good.”

Lyndon Bailey

lyndon bailey

“She’s a lady and when you see somebody on the television crying out for help, if you have a heart you definitely are going to be moved. And I have a heart. I want to help; that’s my passion.”

Livingston’s mobile home will be replaced with a two bedroom house.

Lyndon Bailey

“We’re building a twenty-by-twenty plywood house but we will wrap it and then plaster it so that the water does not damage the plywood.”

Delahnie Bain

“And about how long will this take?”

therese livingston

Lyndon Bailey

“Well, this house will take anything between two to three weeks once we have the amount of material that we need and so we’re helping that NEMO would side in with us and provide some of the material so that we can finish the house quickly.  We have another project, which one of our students, he had lost everything so we’re doing these two houses as a project, using our students from Tubal. It’s work experience. We have some practical—we can use it as a practical sense of teaching and then we have some skilled men with us here working.”

In the meantime, Livingston says people are still stealing from her property.

Therese Livingston

“They pretend that they are helping you, but they are only there to grab the little—like what is the matter with these people up here? But I just pray for them. Inna time ah disaster everybody should come out and help one another, noh come thief man. I noh got nothing and di little dat yoh have they take away?”

Delahnie Bain for News Five.