Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Ex­perts say the 6.2-mag­ni­tude earth­quake that struck Trinidad and To­ba­go on June 22 last year—record­ed at a depth of 46 km by the UWI Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre—may ex­plain why there were rel­a­tive­ly few re­ports of ma­jor struc­tur­al dam­age.

But for Adan­na Winn of Febeau Vil­lage, Laven­tille Road, San Juan, the 6.2-mag­ni­tude shake on­ly rocked her al­ready un­sta­ble world even more.

The sin­gle moth­er of two said the tremor shift­ed the struc­ture of her home, caus­ing a wall in one of her bed­rooms to col­lapse and sev­er­al cracks to ap­pear.

“I was a lit­tle asleep, and I jumped out of my sleep, and when I heard the noise and walked in­to the room, I saw the whole wall fall down,” she said.

With­in days, Winn said, she reached out to her coun­cil­lor, Jenise Cow­ard-Charles. She ex­plained that the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion pro­vid­ed her with three ur­gent let­ters ad­dressed to the Land Set­tle­ment Agency, the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self Help, and the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC). Winn showed Guardian Me­dia five let­ters she re­ceived over the past year, three dat­ed Ju­ly 7, short­ly af­ter the earth­quake, and two more af­ter months of vis­it­ing the of­fices for up­dates. But she said that more than a year lat­er, she has yet to re­ceive any sup­port.

Winn said she al­so mes­saged the mem­ber of par­lia­ment for the area (St Ann’s East), Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, who was a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter at the time, for as­sis­tance, but with­out suc­cess.

“I feel very hurt and very sick be­cause I was all over cry­ing and just ask­ing for help and try­ing to get as­sis­tance, and no­body came to my res­cue. I feel like it’s been too long wait­ing for these peo­ple for this help, and there’s no help,” she said.

Winn said she first be­came home­less in 2011 and was of­fered the di­lap­i­dat­ed prop­er­ty to rent. The land­lord lat­er told her to use the rent mon­ey to car­ry out re­pairs in­stead.

She spent the past 14 years car­ry­ing out what­ev­er re­pairs her salary from the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) could af­ford but said it was like “spin­ning a top in mud”.

“I brought peo­ple to fix the lights. I al­so brought peo­ple to do oth­er stuff like put down ply and fix lit­tle things, touch­ing up in the toi­let, do­ing things to the roof, putting gal­va­nize to try to hold it. A lot of things we tried to do, but it just kept get­ting worse be­cause you can’t fix things that aren’t good, it just doesn’t make any sense,” she shared.

Her two chil­dren, now adults, have since moved out of the house, which is now un­safe to live in, but Winn re­mains.

“I’m not hap­py when I rest my head at night be­cause when I’m sleep­ing, things fall on me. If the rain falls, I have to get up be­cause the whole place just gets wet all over. As soon as you put some­thing down, some­where else leaks,” she said.

Back in June, the Gov­ern­ment dis­man­tled CEPEP, leav­ing her un­em­ployed and in an even more dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. The woman said she has been ap­ply­ing for jobs since then but re­ceived no calls.

“And all I want is some as­sis­tance. Even if it is some­where to stay, some ma­te­r­i­al, any­thing will help with the sit­u­a­tion be­cause it’s very scary and very tight on my end,” she said.

Adding to the home­less­ness and job­less­ness she is al­ready fac­ing, last month, a tree fell on her roof, wors­en­ing the leaks.

“The cor­po­ra­tion starts get­ting vexed when they come be­cause they’re say­ing ‘you ain’t got help yet? Look at your sit­u­a­tion; you ain’t got help?’” she ex­plained.

In tears, the woman said she vis­its the agen­cies more than once a week, even if it means bor­row­ing trans­porta­tion.

Con­tact­ed for feed­back, Gads­by-Dol­ly said when she fol­lowed up with the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self Help last week, she was in­formed that Winn’s emer­gency ap­pli­ca­tion was be­fore the ap­provals com­mit­tee.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said she and the coun­cil­lor for the area ren­dered as­sis­tance that en­abled Winn to sub­mit the ap­pli­ca­tion, which is await­ing ap­proval.

“Yes, this is an on­go­ing sit­u­a­tion that both the Coun­cil­lor and my­self have been deal­ing with. We have been sup­port­ing Ms Winn, who is a fired CEPEP work­er, help­ing to en­sure that she gets the re­quired help from gov­ern­ment agen­cies,” she stat­ed.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that grants had been moved to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Nicholas Mor­ris said they were look­ing in­to the mat­ter.

Any­one will­ing to as­sist can con­tact her at 268-7785 or 327-2802.