Sascha Wil­son

Hours be­fore Christ­mas Day, New Grant res­i­dent Hay­den Grant re­turned home from work to find his house in pieces.

Grant, 38, is now sleep­ing in his car, sep­a­rat­ed from his fam­i­ly and strug­gling to make ends meet.

Grant built his home in 2009 at Nagee Road, Sixth Com­pa­ny, New Grant and had been liv­ing there with his wife Al­isha Aboslam and 15-year-old nephew.

Grant ex­plained that a few days be­fore the tragedy they were hav­ing heavy rain­fall and he saw signs that the land was shift­ing.

“The rain was falling right through and I no­tice some cracks in the land so I went to Dis­as­ter peo­ple first when I saw the set of cracks. I was think­ing it was drainage.”

He said a team from the the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit at the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion did a site vis­it and took pho­tos and in­for­ma­tion.

He said he worked Christ­mas Eve and when he re­turned home some­time af­ter 10 pm he saw that his house had col­lapsed.

While he is thank­ful that nei­ther his wife nor nephew was home, Grant lament­ed, “You know it heart­break­ing. Christ­mas Eve Day is when every­body bak­ing they ham, prepar­ing for Christ­mas Day, Christ­mas sea­son and to come home and meet this, it hard.”

Point­ing on the plas­tic grab on his wardrobe buried un­der the rub­ble, he said just be­fore Christ­mas he bought new fur­ni­ture, in­clud­ing a tele­vi­sion set.

Every­thing got dam­aged when his two bed­room wood­en and con­crete home crum­bled.

Grant has had many sleep­less nights since the in­ci­dent.

While his wife and nephew were stay­ing by rel­a­tives, he sleeps most nights in his car.

“Since that I sleep­ing now and then by my sis­ter or I sleep in my car. Things re­al tough,” said Grant.

Not­ing that last year he got a chest in­fec­tion and spent three months in hos­pi­tal, Grant said he has not ful­ly re­cov­ered.

While he has been work­ing as hard as he could, Grant said work is low and he does not have the fi­nances to re­build.

He said, “If I could get as­sis­tance with ma­te­r­i­al I could do my labour for my­self. The Gov­ern­ment sup­posed to have things in place for things like these be­cause this is a dis­as­ter. I call­ing out to them for what­ev­er they could as­sist with.”

He said the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit gave him a let­ter to take to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment.

He es­ti­mat­ed his loss­es to be over $100,000.

Any­one in­ter­est­ed in as­sist­ing Grant could con­tact him at 335-8180.

Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin vis­it­ed Grant a few days ago and has made a pub­lic ap­peal over Face­book for as­sis­tance on his be­half.

Not­ing that his house was de­stroyed by an ac­tive land­slide, she said, “Let’s sup­port this fam­i­ly dur­ing this chal­leng­ing time.”