Reporter
carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt
Fourteen family members who live in a house on Green Hill, Diego Martin, are now searching for a property to rent for the next three months.
The individuals make up three families and each familial unit is receiving the Government’s Rental Assistance Grant of $2,500 a month separately for the three-month period.
“We are studying the children,” resident Onela Farrell explained.
The grants were the first offer of stability they received after a landslide destroyed their home during the early hours of Tuesday morning.
“Within the hours of 2.45 to 3 am, that’s when we heard the little rumble in the ground and that’s when we heard the bang...we had to pull the kids aside, pull them, it burst through the wall,” she said.
Farrell said it was raining so heavily that they could not come out of the house and they worried that the structure would cave in on them.
It didn’t, but the Farrell family lost most of their belongings.
“When we came out here, the front was falling down, the whole front fell, it almost hit my sister-in-law...When we came here the results is shoes, is clothes, is books, is school supplies, everything that was done organised for school, appliances buried in dirt,” Farrell explained.
But the landslide did not happen overnight and according to Farrell, the family applied for government assistance to address a land movement issue in 2019. They built a retaining wall on their own to prevent such an outcome but the dirt pushed that away.
“We trying to get the neighbour to do what he has to do with putting up the retaining wall because we did our part,” she said.
When Guardian Media visited on Thursday, the family showed a shed they had knocked together so their children could have somewhere dry and safe to stay.
Eight children lived on the property.
“They said the house is not liveable, it is not suitable for us to stay there, it is a death trap,” she said.
Farrell said they accepted the rental grant because the family genuinely has nowhere to go. She said they all work hard to make ends meet but admitted there was no way she could repurchase all that was destroyed, noting especially her children’s school supplies.
Farrell was not the only adult in the household with that on their mind.
“I buy and put down for them children to go to school and it bury in the ground right now...it’s textbooks, stationeries, my lil daughter lost all she shoes, clothes and thing,” a relative, who did not want to be identified, said.
Diego Martin Mayor Akeliah Glasgow-Warner said as soon as she heard of the incident, a field worker was sent to assess the damage.
Glasgow-Warner said they were waiting for an authorisation letter from the owner of the property to begin structural repairs.
Anyone willing to assist can contact the family at 267-3179.
