Carenage home on verge of collapse after heavy rain

Black Immigrant Daily News

The content originally appeared on: Trinidad and Tobago Newsday

The home of Simone Mundy at L’Anse Mitan Road, Carenage, after a landslide took part of the downstairs after heavy rains on Monday. – Joshua Labadie

A 48-year-old Carenage woman said on Monday she will risk spending the night in her home, which is on the verge of collapse after heavy rain, because, she says, she has nowhere else to go.

Simone Mundy told Newsday she was in Port of Spain at about 1 pm, awaiting transport to get home, when she got the call that a landslide had taken down a retaining wall and part of the lower floor of her two-storey home at L’Anse Mitan Road.

“I come home and see the whole thing collapse to the downstairs. You could see straight through the downstairs. I have no more wall, and the downstairs gone through.”

Mundy said she applied to the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) and is awaiting allocation. She said she suffered a landslide to the back of her home three years ago and nothing came out of it, although she asked for help from government agencies.

Asked where she and her family, which includes her daughter, husband and a friend who has been staying with her would sleep, Mundy said they have no choice but to stay in the house.

There was a landslide at Mundy’s neighbour and former national sprinter Patrick “Bullet” Delice’s home as well. The moving earth felled a mango tree and other trees, pulling down wires and blocking the main access to their homes.

In 2011, Delice survived a landslide which tore open part of his home. Delice, who represented the country in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics in the 200 and 400 metres, said then that the landslide opened his bedroom wall, and had he been in bed at the time he might have been dead.

In a video sent to Newsday on Monday, Delice complained of repeatedly asking for assistance to erect a retaining wall and to redirect water from undermining his neighbour’s home whenever rain falls. Monday’s incident, he said, is the culmination of neglect.

The heavy rain which caused flooding in many parts of Trinidad reminded L’Anse Mitan residents of a major flood that swept away cars and businesses in 2007.

While the river water consumed part of the road on Monday, it only took bags of garbage that had not been removed from the overflowing bin.

Mundy recalled that incident, which saw some of her neighbours losing their vehicles and livelihoods. She said what happened on Monday was not as bad as 15 years ago in terms of the volume of water, but then she was not affected as she is now.

She, like Delice, is hoping to get some assistance in clearing the landslide and taking steps to ensure that such instances don’t recur or, at the very least, the impact is minimal.

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