A fam­i­ly of 12 faces los­ing their home, which has been in the fam­i­ly for over 50 years, af­ter a land­slide this month se­vere­ly dam­aged the prop­er­ty. They are ur­gent­ly plead­ing for swift gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion to pre­vent to­tal loss.

Car­ol Joseph of Preg­nan­cy Lane, La Puer­ta Av­enue, Diego Mar­tin, said she first no­ticed some­thing was wrong when the plat­form at the side of her house be­gan to crack.

That was on Mon­day, Ju­ly 15. By Wednes­day, Joseph said most of the ground had slipped, with parts of the plat­form crum­bling every day since.

“We were home, we were all sleep­ing, we were all in­side, we thought it was ac­tu­al­ly thun­der... we heard when it fell, we just grabbed things and left the house. We couldn’t stay, we didn’t know what was go­ing to hap­pen next,” she said.

Among those liv­ing there are an 86-year-old woman and a five-year-old child. Joseph said her moth­er has not been cop­ing well with the sit­u­a­tion.

“Hor­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble. Two or three days ago my broth­er took her to the doc­tor. All she’s study­ing is, ‘My wall is gone, my house is go­ing’... the lit­tle one is cry­ing, she wants to go home,” she ex­plained.

The fam­i­ly im­me­di­ate­ly vis­it­ed the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit of the Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion and con­tact­ed their Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment (MP), Hans des Vi­gnes, for as­sis­tance. How­ev­er, Joseph ex­plained that while they are grate­ful, they do not need more mat­tress­es, food cards, or rental as­sis­tance that could ben­e­fit oth­er fam­i­lies.

She added that they would like the wall re­paired, but an en­gi­neer pro­vid­ed an es­ti­mate of over $200,000. They do not have that mon­ey, and in the past, they ap­plied to the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self Help Lim­it­ed for a sim­i­lar project. Ac­cord­ing to the web­site, once is the lim­it. They plan to vis­it the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices next, as they do what they can on their own to help them­selves.

“Up to this morn­ing (Sat­ur­day), we had to pay over $600 for some peo­ple to help us, and our drainage is run­ning this way, so we can­not weak­en it any­more,” she said.

“We are ask­ing any busi­ness peo­ple who have hard­ware or stuff like that for as­sis­tance. If pos­si­ble, we will be very, very thank­ful,” an­oth­er rel­a­tive said from the back­ground.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to Jo­van Alex­is, who lives in the house be­low Joseph’s. His struc­ture was al­so dam­aged, and he said that for years, both par­ties have been com­plain­ing about drainage. He, too, is plead­ing for swift as­sis­tance, es­pe­cial­ly since he has a ba­by on the way.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Diego Mar­tin West, Hans des Vi­gnes, who said he met with the fam­i­ly last week.

He ex­plained that he in­struct­ed them to sub­mit the es­ti­mate pro­vid­ed by their en­gi­neer, and his of­fice would write to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to seek as­sis­tance.

How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that the fam­i­ly is ex­treme­ly fear­ful of los­ing their house be­cause of the strong emo­tion­al ties. The MP said he is work­ing dili­gent­ly to as­sist all par­ties.

Any­one will­ing to as­sist the Joseph fam­i­ly can con­tact them at 738-5474, or those wish­ing to help Alex­is can call him at 769-6980.