Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

A 44-year-old woman is re­cov­er­ing from mi­nor leg in­juries and grap­pling with the trau­ma of los­ing her home, af­ter a land­slide sent de­bris crash­ing down on­to her house at East­ern Quar­ry, Laven­tille, de­stroy­ing it.

The fright­en­ing in­ci­dent hap­pened on Sun­day af­ter­noon, when the wall of a near­by build­ing gave way as the land slipped and slammed in­to the woman’s res­i­dence with lit­tle warn­ing while she was tak­ing a bath.

“My neigh­bour put up a wall some­time ear­ly last year but I don’t know what hap­pened. Ap­par­ent­ly, be­cause of the heavy rain, it couldn’t take the weight of it and it just gave way and col­lapse right on top of my roof.”

The land­slide left the two-bed­room home in ru­ins, with rub­ble, splin­tered wood and shat­tered glass lit­ter­ing what was once her liv­ing space when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day.

The in­ci­dent fol­lowed heavy rain­fall over the week­end caused by an In­tertrop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (the ris­ing air pro­duces high cloudi­ness, fre­quent thun­der­storms, and heavy rain­fall). A Yel­low Lev­el weath­er alert was trig­gered and re­ports of flood­ing across the coun­try were sub­se­quent­ly re­port­ed. The Met Of­fice down­grad­ed the alert to Green lev­el yes­ter­day.

Re­call­ing the mo­ment her life was turned up­side down, Woods yes­ter­day said, “I had just tak­en a show­er quick­ly be­cause the wa­ter was go­ing so I made it quick so I be­lieve if the wa­ter had nor­mal pres­sure, I might have died be­cause the en­tire bath­room and every­thing caved in.”

Woods ex­plained that she feared she would be trapped un­der the de­bris of the home she had been liv­ing in for the last sev­en years.

“Every­thing start­ed falling. I heard loud nois­es like if it is Afghanistan, it sound­ed like bombs. It was re­al­ly loud. I got scared and things just start­ed to fly and hit me,” Woods re­called.

“I tried to run to the door but it was blocked and I came back to the win­dow, and it was bur­glar-proofed and I couldn’t get out. I start­ed to spin like a top and said, ‘Lord, help me please.’”

She added, “I was just wait­ing for some­thing to crush me, so I was re­al­ly sur­prised that I was alive. When I walked out and see every­body, I thought I was in heav­en.”

The Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs em­ploy­ee said she sus­tained mi­nor in­juries while flee­ing for her life.

“I start­ed run­ning as fast as I could, then I start­ed to feel pain and hopped all the way out. My neigh­bours and all were ac­tu­al­ly sur­prised that I sur­vived it. They put me to sit down to try and calm me and that is when they saw blood. I got stitch­es on both my left leg and right leg.”

Now dis­placed, Woods told Guardian Me­dia that she was stay­ing with neigh­bours and while she was un­sure of what would come next, she was moved to tears as she re­count­ed the com­mu­ni­ty’s sup­port. “I just want to say thank you, thank you. They have been here for me, and they car­ried me and helped me. I thought no­body was go­ing to help me but I see every­body come to help me and get me out of the house.”

Al­though her home was in ru­ins and her be­long­ings buried un­der bricks and rub­ble, Woods said the emo­tion­al toll out­weighed her phys­i­cal in­juries.

She con­firmed that she had been con­tact­ed by her Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Ka­reem Mar­celle, and oth­er of­fi­cials.

“I re­al­ly hope I get help. I hope, maybe, the Min­istry of Hous­ing can step in and prob­a­bly give me some as­sis­tance, I will great­ly ap­pre­ci­ate it. I know the switch in min­istries, peo­ple are say­ing they won’t be able to do any­thing right now, but I am hop­ing they can come in and give some help.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee and MP Mar­celle to find out what as­sis­tance they could ren­der Woods im­me­di­ate­ly were un­suc­cess­ful, as they did not re­spond to calls.