A San Fran­cique fam­i­ly who was al­leged­ly forced to leave their home, af­ter it was sig­nif­i­cant­ly dam­aged by a wa­ter leak, is threat­en­ing to sue the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty(WASA).

Em­ma Nar­ine-Mo­hammed, 55, her hus­band Cedric, 61, her par­ents Ramhit, 79, and Mar­i­lyn Nar­ine, 80, sis­ter Mar­lene Shadick, 49, and broth­er-in-law Fazil Hamid Shadick, 50, sent a pre-ac­tion let­ter through their at­tor­ney Rae­sa Mo­hammed, of Mag­nus At­tor­neys-at-Law, to WASA’s act­ing CEO Kelvin Ro­main.

They want WASA to state whether it will ad­mit li­a­bil­i­ty for neg­li­gence and/or nui­sance and/or statu­to­ry breach which caused dam­age to their home and their as­so­ci­at­ed loss­es and whether it in­tends to com­pen­sate them.

The fam­i­ly claims WASA’s fail­ure to ad­e­quate­ly re­pair and main­tain its wa­ter mains, lo­cat­ed on their prop­er­ty at Pluck Road, caused dam­age, loss of prop­er­ty and emo­tion­al dis­tress. 

Their at­tor­ney said a land­slide oc­curred around 2013 and NID­CO com­menced re­pair works in March 2014. A met­al sheet wall was erect­ed in front of the fam­i­ly’s home and the leak was re­paired.  
The fam­i­ly said their home was dam­aged by the con­stant vi­bra­tions from the heavy equip­ment used to do the re­pair work.

In June 2015, they re­con­struct­ed their home and lived com­fort­ably in the two-storey con­crete and wood­en struc­ture but in No­vem­ber 2015, the fam­i­ly no­ticed wa­ter leak­ing from a main on the cor­ner of San­ta Ce­celia and Pluck Road.

Mo­hammed said, “Through­out this pe­ri­od, the in­tend­ed claimants con­tact­ed WASA via email on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions to in­form them of said wa­ter leak. Around 2019-2020, the in­tend­ed claimants start­ed notic­ing cracks along the ceil­ings, walls and con­crete columns sup­port­ing the in­tend­ed claimants’ home. The home be­gan to tilt as a re­sult of the weak­ened sup­port­ing columns and items such as gro­ceries and wares placed with­in the in­tend­ed claimants’ kitchen cup­boards would slide out due to the slant of the home.”

The at­tor­ney said the wa­ter leaks and flood­ing be­came more fre­quent in Feb­ru­ary 2021 and over time, the home be­came di­lap­i­dat­ed and her clients were forced to move out in No­vem­ber 2022. 

Nar­ine-Mo­hammed, her hus­band and her par­ents be­gan rent­ing a two-bed­room apart­ment at San­ta Ce­cil­ia Road, while the Shadicks and their two chil­dren be­gan rent­ing an apart­ment at Pluck Road.    

In De­cem­ber 2022, they ob­tained an in­de­pen­dent ex­pert re­port from con­sult­ing en­gi­neers Lau­ris­ton Lewis As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed that con­clud­ed that full re­pairs were re­quired to the WASA main and the road­way and drainage be­fore any work could be done on the house.

The re­port al­so rec­om­mend­ed that the home be de­mol­ished and re­con­struct­ed to pro­vide greater struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty and life span. 
  The fam­i­ly is claim­ing ag­gra­vat­ed and/or ex­em­plary dam­ages.
WASA has been giv­en 28 days to re­spond to the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter or le­gal pro­ceed­ings will be in­sti­tut­ed and an in­junc­tive or­der sought to com­pel WASA to pay for ad­e­quate ac­com­mo­da­tion for the fam­i­ly.