Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

For more than a year res­i­dents of Sea Scape Apart­ments, John Street, Co­corite, have been liv­ing in fear that a land­slide at the back of their apart­ments will come crash­ing down.

Since the in­ci­dent, some of the apart­ment own­ers have been rent­ing at oth­er lo­ca­tions to en­sure their safe­ty. They said of­fi­cials vis­it­ed their com­pound im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent and again in June 2023 and since then, there has been no word on whether a re­tain­ing wall will be built or if the land­slide, which now cov­ers most of the back yard of the apart­ments, will be cleared.

One of the af­fect­ed res­i­dents, Lor­raine Far­rell, said the land­slide oc­curred just af­ter 1 am on De­cem­ber 9 last year.

“The en­tire wall at the back came crash­ing down. Pri­or to that, we had been notic­ing signs, such as a white struc­ture at the top show­ing out­ward crack­ing. Dur­ing rains, a wa­ter­fall was cre­at­ed by the rains com­ing down to the back of the apart­ments, where the wall ac­tu­al­ly col­lapsed,” she said.

Far­rell said res­i­dents of ground floor apart­ments moved out af­ter the in­ci­dent and many of them have not re­turned. Some oc­cu­pants of first floor apart­ments have board­ed up their win­dows and doors in case of a land­slide.

“Peo­ple who have paid off their mort­gages or are cur­rent­ly pay­ing a mort­gage for here and rent­ing out­side are try­ing to get some type of feed­back or word on what is hap­pen­ing with our sit­u­a­tion. De­spite all these re­ports from the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, we don’t have an idea,” Far­rell said.

“It’s fright­en­ing. As soon as the dark clouds or those drops of rain start, I am out be­cause re­liv­ing that sound that we heard that morn­ing is scary. We lit­er­al­ly thought the build­ing was falling down—the vi­bra­tion. I am not com­fort­able com­ing back here to live un­til some re­me­di­al work is done.”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the area, Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Symon De No­bri­ga and Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne could not be reached for com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion.