Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Fight­ing back tears and hold­ing her nine-month-old ba­by in her arms, Me­li­ka King climbed out of the back win­dow of her house af­ter it col­lapsed in Pleas­antville ear­ly Wednes­day.King's par­ents–Cheryl Ann King-Sci­pio, 55, and Sime­on Sci­pio, 58–had to claw through rub­ble to get to safe­ty.For most of Wednes­day, the fam­i­ly sat un­der a man­go tree out­side the fall­en house, wait­ing for help.Sci­pio said she was not sur­prised the house col­lapsed, be­cause since last year she had been beg­ging Gov­ern­ment for as­sis­tance. MP for San Fer­nan­do East Patrick Man­ning, who is ail­ing, was not able to help, Sci­pio said. In des­per­a­tion, she went to coun­cil­lor Robert Par­ris and San Fer­nan­do May­or Dr Navi Mu­radali but noth­ing was done.

Sci­pio said her prob­lems start­ed when a wa­ter main close to her home be­gan leak­ing."Wa­ter start­ed to gush down and my house posts start­ed to lean," Sci­pio said.She ex­plained that around 2 am, while she was asleep, the back of the wood­en house came tum­bling down."My daugh­ter grabbed the ba­by. My hus­band was the first to come out, and he helped Me­li­ka and the ba­by out the win­dow," Sci­pio said.Wip­ing away tears, she added: "We just wait­ing and we hope that we will get a de­cent place to stay." In the mean­time, Sci­pio said they would stay with her son Nkosi King, who lives in a wood­en house next door.Staff from the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly Wednes­day and took a re­port.

Mounds of garbage, in­clud­ing plas­tic bot­tles, co­conut shells, old cloth­ing and oth­er items were heaped in­side and out­side the house, even though Sci­pio said garbage trucks work in the area. Sci­pio said she was in the process of clean­ing up the house when it col­lapsed.Sime­on said he did not have a cer­tifi­cate of com­fort to show own­er­ship of the land. How­ev­er, he pro­duced doc­u­ments to show he made a $1,546 down­pay­ment to pur­chase the land from the Min­istry of Hous­ing.A crew from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty was on the site Wednes­day and was seen do­ing re­pairs to pipelines.

Con­tact­ed Wednes­day, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er of WASA, Ellen Lewis, said: "We will in­ves­ti­gate the claim to de­ter­mine as to whether or not the col­lapse of the build­ing is as a con­se­quence of any leak­ing pipeline as is be­ing al­leged."Mean­while, coun­cil­lor Par­ris said he planned to con­tact Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty to help the fam­i­ly, al­though Sci­pio had to pro­vide land own­er­ship doc­u­ments be­fore she could get help from them or from the Self Help Com­mis­sion.Par­ris said he was not the coun­cil­lor for the area but has been aware of Sci­pio's plight for some time and had asked her to sub­mit her doc­u­ments more than three months ago.The com­mis­sion has of­fered to as­sist Sci­pio, pro­vid­ing that she meets all the re­quire­ments for a grant.