RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.siookraj@guardian.co.tt

In a ter­ri­fy­ing brush with death, three men were pinned un­der rub­ble when their house col­lapsed ear­lyTues­day morn­ing. How­ev­er, their lives were spared be­cause of quick think­ing and team­work by their neigh­boursl.

Clevon Ed­wards, 23, his broth­er Nkosi Ren­nie, 24, and cousin Sachin Mo­han, 23, were were sleep in their home at Cir­cle Dri­ve, Em­bac­cadere, San Fer­nan­do at 2 am when the mishap oc­curred.

Ed­wards said he was jolt­ed from his sleep by a loud crash­ing sound.

“ I felt the whole place shak­ing, and then sud­den­ly the roof col­lapsed,” he re­called.

Ren­nie said they were trapped un­der the de­bris and for sev­er­al min­utes were un­able to get out from un­der the pile of rot­ted wood, loose gal­va­nized sheets, and bro­ken fur­ni­ture.

His cousin Ressa Ren­nie, who was part of the res­cue team, said she thought all three of them were dead.

“It was scary be­cause they were not an­swer­ing us. My cousins came, and they helped to free them. I al­so saw my neigh­bour start to run, call­ing out my cousin. I opened my door and ran out too. I start­ed to move things and we called every­one, but there was no an­swer,” she said.

“ I thought my cousins died when I got no an­swer,” she re­called, her voice heavy with emo­tion.

Work­ing to­geth­er, the vil­lagers cleared the rub­ble, piece by piece, un­til the trapped men crawled out.

“We start­ed to lift the roof, and we saw one per­son pinned against the chair on the roof. Then my oth­er cousin start­ed to come out through a wall on this side. An­oth­er one was walk­ing on top of the ply but didn’t re­al­ize he was walk­ing on top of an­oth­er cousin. We raised the ply, and he start­ed to shout, ‘Aye, all of you on top of me,’” Ressa re­count­ed.

She said there was no wind or heavy rain to push over the house.

“We think the land was mov­ing be­cause we are near the sea­side where there is ero­sion,” she said.

The fam­i­ly is now call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to pro­vide them with a home.

Sev­en peo­ple lived in the house, in­clud­ing Ed­wards’s par­ents, Mau­re­cia Re­nee and Car­los Tyson, who were both at work when the calami­ty un­fold­ed. Two of the Ed­wards’ sis­ters, Calis­sa, 13 and Kylie, 10, and his four-year-old son Caleb were al­so not at home.

Of­fi­cials from the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly ac­com­pa­nied by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of T&TEC, who dis­con­nect­ed the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply. Any­one will­ing to sup­port the fam­i­ly with build­ing ma­te­ri­als can reach out to Mau­re­cia at 347-5519.