Rhon­dor Dowlat

Sur­round­ing homes at Mt D’or where the de­struc­tive land­slip oc­curred on Tues­day that com­plete­ly de­stroyed a house leav­ing five peo­ple home­less have been as­sessed by en­gi­neers of The Gov­ern­ment’s Aid­ed Self-Help Hous­ing Pro­gramme.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian, St Joseph MP Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, who was very in­stru­men­tal in get­ting im­me­di­ate as­sis­tance for the land­slip vic­tim, Karen Teles­ford and her fam­i­ly as­sured that her neigh­bours, “need not fear for their own homes.”

Dur­ing a vis­it to Williams Street, Deyals­ingh said the en­gi­neers have as­sured that they will pro­vide emer­gency re­sponse to them.

“They have en­sured that emer­gency work will be car­ried out to sta­bilise their re­spec­tive prop­er­ties to pre­vent their hous­es from com­ing down al­so,” Deyals­ingh said.

With re­spect to Teles­ford and her fam­i­ly, Deyals­ingh said that a par­cel of land has been iden­ti­fied by the af­fect­ed fam­i­ly in which they can start re­build­ing. Deyals­ingh said once all the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments have been pre­sent­ed with re­spect to the land oc­cu­pan­cy, the fam­i­ly will get a $25,000 grant from the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self Help for the foun­da­tion.

“Once this is done, I have al­ready got­ten cor­po­rate spon­sors to as­sist in the con­struc­tion of the rest of the house once every­thing goes well and the foun­da­tion is laid. In the mean­time, I have do­nat­ed two mat­tress­es and house­hold items. These peo­ple are amaz­ing peo­ple and they have not laid blame on any­one but un­der­stand that this was an act of God per se,” Deyals­ingh said.

On Tues­day, Teles­ford claimed that she, her hus­band and three grand­chil­dren, ages 10, 14 and 16, man­aged to es­cape in­jury as they had aban­doned the house on Mon­day.

She ex­plained that ear­li­er this year, she and her hus­band no­ticed the land slip­ping near their homes and cracks in the wall of the kitchen.

She claimed that af­ter heavy rain­fall two weeks ago, she con­tact­ed the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment to as­sist in as­sess­ing the house.

Teles­ford said while her fam­i­ly was able to save some items be­fore they fled the prop­er­ty, most of their valu­ables were lost as the house col­lapsed in the land­slide.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic who may want to make do­na­tions to the fam­i­ly can con­tact Teles­ford at 365-2082.