Mo­ments be­fore their wood­en house came tum­bling down pen­sion­er To­ra An­drews grabbed her six-year-old grand­son and ran for their lives in­to the pour­ing rain on Wednes­day. The shack, over­grown with vines, tum­bled for­ward, caus­ing the fam­i­ly to pan­ic. An­drews' daugh­ter Michelle,who was asleep in­side at the time, re­mained trau­ma­tised yes­ter­day. All of the fam­i­ly's pos­ses­sions were soaked in the rain, which con­tin­ued to fall up to mid­day yes­ter­day. Fur­ni­ture, ap­pli­ances and house­hold items re­mained buried be­neath the rub­ble yes­ter­day. The back of the build­ing was lean­ing and rel­a­tives said it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore the rest of the house col­lapsed. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, An­drews said she had no choice but to go beg­ging to bor­row mon­ey to re­pair the house.

Her sons Stephen An­drews, who works as a se­cu­ri­ty guard and Rod­ney An­drews, 39, a labour­er, tried to sal­vage some ma­te­r­i­al to re­con­struct a new house at the front. Stephen said, how­ev­er, that ma­te­r­i­al ran out and they were forced to stop work­ing be­cause of heavy rains. The house at Cir­cle Dri­ve,Em­bac­cadere, San Fer­nan­do, is lo­cat­ed in a low-ly­ing area prone to flood­ing. Sit­ting on the tilt­ed wood­en stairs, An­drews said she did not know what to do. "It is years now we beg­ging the Gov­ern­ment for the house grant to do re­pairs... I spoke with Sharon Loney, the PNM coun­cil­lor, and I signed up the pa­pers, but I nev­er re­ceived any help," An­drews said. She added that her chil­dren did not work for enough mon­ey to do ren­o­va­tion. Grand­daugh­ter Anasta­cia McGillvery, 19, a store clerk at a shop­ping mall, said she spent more than $20 each day in trav­el­ling ex­pens­es.

Say­ing she could not get a job clos­er to home, Anasta­cia said the fam­i­ly need­ed as­sis­tance to re­con­struct the house. She said since the house col­lapsed, her aunt Michelle and six-yearold Je­heil Gabriel had been stay­ing at the home of Gabriel's fa­ther, lo­cat­ed fur­ther down the street at Em­bac­cadere. The pen­sion­er and Stephen have been stay­ing at a rel­a­tive's home, but Rod­ney re­turned to the house to sleep. Anasta­cia said they were un­com­fort­able sleep­ing at oth­er peo­ple's homes. "We just need a place of our own to stay," Anasta­cia said. She ex­plained that even be­fore the house col­lapsed, it used to leak. Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh could not be reached for com­ment on his cel­lu­lar yes­ter­day. May­or of San Fer­nan­do Mar­lene Coudray was al­so un­avail­able for com­ment. Any­one will­ing to as­sist the fam­i­ly can con­tact them at 773-2400.