The Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices has re­spond­ed to an in­ci­dent in the Laven­tille area where a house col­lapsed due to the heavy rain­fall ex­pe­ri­enced across the coun­try.

On Sun­day, the Min­istry re­ceived a re­port from the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit of the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing the col­lapse of a home lo­cat­ed at East­ern Quar­ry, Laven­tille. The in­ci­dent was trig­gered by heavy rain­fall, which caused a neigh­bour­ing re­tain­ing wall to col­lapse on­to the home of De­bra Woods. The im­pact re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant struc­tur­al dam­age to the prop­er­ty and mi­nor per­son­al in­juries to Woods, who has since been forced to tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cate to the home of a friend.

On Mon­day, of­fi­cers of the NS­DP con­duct­ed a site vis­it and client in­ter­view with Woods.The Min­istry says im­me­di­ate re­lief was pro­vid­ed in the form of a tem­po­rary food sup­port card val­ued at $510.00 while Woods was al­so ad­vised of her el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for ad­di­tion­al grants un­der the Min­istry’s emer­gency re­lief sup­port, in­clud­ing:

· Rental As­sis­tance Grant of up to $2,500.00 per month for a pe­ri­od of three months

· House­hold Items Grant of up to $10,000.00 for the re­place­ment of fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances

· Cloth­ing Grant of up to $1,000.00

The NS­DP says it is al­so work­ing with Woods to fi­nalise her ap­pli­ca­tion and ob­tain the rel­e­vant doc­u­men­ta­tion to ac­cess these grants.