SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wilsob@guardian.co.tt

Two fam­i­lies are count­ing their bless­ings af­ter the floor sep­a­rat­ing their up­per- and low­er-lev­el apart­ments in Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) Build­ing Three on Ja­madar Street, San Fer­nan­do, col­lapsed in the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day. The col­lapse, which oc­curred around 1 am, sent the bed­room floor­ing, along with a bed and oth­er fur­ni­ture, crash­ing in­to the down­stairs apart­ment. No in­juries were re­port­ed.

Up­per-floor ten­ant Gail Mo­han-Thomas said the in­ci­dent came as lit­tle sur­prise, as the wood­en floor­ing had been crack­ing through­out the week. “We knew that this might have even­tu­al­ly hap­pened be­cause dur­ing the week, it start­ed crack­ing and crack­ing and crack­ing. It was around 12.58 and we just heard, like, boom, so we knew it fell,” she said. Mo­han-Thomas said she and her son were home alone at the time, while her hus­band was at work. She had al­ready moved her 16-year-old son in­to an­oth­er room af­ter notic­ing the floor in his bed­room de­te­ri­o­rat­ing fur­ther.

“Luck­i­ly, ear­li­er this month, we were able to move the wardrobe and his desk, but we were nev­er able to get to the bed. So the bed went down with all the oth­er things in the room,” she said. Mo­han-Thomas said they be­gan com­plain­ing to the HDC about the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing floor­ing three years ago. She was still fear­ful for their safe­ty, cit­ing oth­er com­pro­mised sec­tions of the floor­ing.

“We could live. We just have to walk easy and pray that no­body falls through. This whole place shak­ing. The cor­ri­dor shak­ing, every­where shak­ing. It’s just that that one was the worst and we knew that it would have gone down first.” She said she would wel­come re­lo­ca­tion to safer ac­com­mo­da­tion.

“This is ter­ri­ble. This didn’t have to reach this I see our crew is down­stairs now. How come our crew come this morn­ing? We have been wait­ing and wait­ing. This could have been avoid­ed.”

Down­stairs, ten­ant Richard Phillips, who lives with his two chil­dren, son-in-law and two grand­chil­dren, said he had wok­en up when he heard the crash. “Hear­ing that noise, I ran out­side. At the same time, my son ran out­side. See, the bed, every­thing was here,” said Phillip. He was thank­ful that his grand­chil­dren were not at home. Phillips said he had moved out fur­ni­ture from the liv­ing room be­cause he feared this would hap­pen.

“And we start­ed to use the back door on­ly, be­cause we have to pass through the liv­ing room to use the front door. But, still some­times we still passed here, so thank God no one was hurt.”

Phillips said he had spent $3,000 in ma­te­ri­als to do the re­pairs, af­ter be­ing told by HDC that ma­te­ri­als were not avail­able. How­ev­er, he said he still had to de­pend on HDC to pro­vide the labour, which nev­er came, un­til now. Mean­while, Les Ef­forts East/Cipero coun­cil­lor Ryaad Ho­sein vis­it­ed the fam­i­lies and al­so ex­pressed con­cern over the sit­u­a­tion and the di­lap­i­dat­ed con­di­tion of the oth­er build­ings in the com­mu­ni­ty. He called on HDC to ur­gent­ly ef­fect the nec­es­sary re­pairs and en­sure the res­i­dents’ safe­ty. Dur­ing the in­ter­view yes­ter­day morn­ing, an HDC crew was con­duct­ing works. Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der said that the mat­ter was not among the re­ports they had re­ceived on the hot­line he had es­tab­lished.

How­ev­er, he said as the mat­ter was brought to his at­ten­tion, the HDC’s rapid re­sponse team was dis­patched with­in hours and work is on­go­ing. Not­ing that the build­ings were around 60 years old, he said he was not sure of the qual­i­ty of work done un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, but he as­sured res­i­dents that the re­pairs will be done to prop­er pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards. Both Alexan­der and Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee said they were ad­vised that the area had been as­sessed by a spe­cial ser­vices con­tin­gent of the Es­tate Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion and there were no im­me­di­ate threats or haz­ards pos­ing a dan­ger to life or limb. With ma­te­ri­als hav­ing been sourced from HDC’s San Fer­nan­do Area Of­fice and Stores, Lee said they were aim­ing to have the re­pairs com­plet­ed yes­ter­day.

Mean­while, HDC’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ronald Hug­gins said the cor­po­ra­tion is deeply con­cerned about the in­ci­dent and as­sured the mat­ter was be­ing treat­ed with ur­gency. He said they were al­so tak­ing se­ri­ous­ly the con­cerns raised by res­i­dents re­gard­ing re­ports raised three years ago about the con­di­tion of the prop­er­ty. He added that those con­cerns will be re­viewed as part of their as­sess­ment of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing this in­ci­dent, and HDC would en­sure ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion is tak­en to safe­guard the af­fect­ed res­i­dents.