Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Re­pair work was near­ing com­ple­tion yes­ter­day, a day af­ter part of the floor be­tween two apart­ments in Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) Build­ing Three on Ja­madar Street, San Fer­nan­do, col­lapsed.

Ken­neth Thomas and his wife, Gail Mo­han-Thomas, who live in the up­per apart­ment with their 16-year-old son, said they were grate­ful for the quick re­sponse. How­ev­er, they re­mained con­cerned about their safe­ty be­cause oth­er sec­tions of the floor­ing al­so need­ed re­pairs.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day, a work crew from the HDC’s Spe­cial Ser­vices Con­tin­gent of the Es­tate Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion was still on site. Steel C-chan­nels and con­crete board were be­ing used to re­build the bed­room floor, re­plac­ing the wood.

The cou­ple’s son had moved out of the bed­room ear­li­er this year, and most of the fur­ni­ture had al­so been re­moved be­cause the fam­i­ly feared the floor could col­lapse.

The dam­aged sec­tion was above the liv­ing room of the down­stairs apart­ment, oc­cu­pied by Richard Phillips and his fam­i­ly. When the floor gave way at about 1 am on Sat­ur­day, the Thomases’ bed crashed in­to Phillips’ apart­ment.

For­tu­nate­ly, Phillips had al­ready moved the liv­ing-room fur­ni­ture as a pre­cau­tion. He said he al­so be­lieved the ceil­ing would even­tu­al­ly col­lapse be­cause of its di­lap­i­dat­ed con­di­tion.

Both fam­i­lies said they had made nu­mer­ous re­quests to the HDC over the past three years to re­pair the floor and ceil­ing, but no work had been done.

Phillips said he had bought $3,000 worth of ma­te­ri­als for the re­pairs af­ter the HDC told him ma­te­ri­als were un­avail­able. He was wait­ing for the cor­po­ra­tion to pro­vide the labour.

He told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that work­ers had used some of the ma­te­ri­als he bought to car­ry out re­pairs.

While both fam­i­lies said they were sat­is­fied with the HDC’s re­sponse, the Thomases said oth­er sec­tions of the wood­en floor­ing in their apart­ment were in­fest­ed with wood lice.

“In all the rooms, with the ex­cep­tion of the room my son is in back there, the floor is shak­ing. Grad­u­al­ly, at some point in time, it will start to crum­ble like the one in the back,” Thomas said.

He ap­pealed to the HDC to con­duct a thor­ough as­sess­ment of the apart­ment.

“[Do a] com­pre­hen­sive as­sess­ment of the build­ing, of the apart­ment, and make sure that every­thing is feel­ing very good, just liv­ing com­fort­ably. I’d be thank­ful for that be­cause I’m not ask­ing for much. But I will be thank­ful for that be­cause, again, ap­par­ent­ly the whole place is shak­ing.”

His wife said she had lived in the apart­ment since 1992.

In a state­ment on Sat­ur­day, HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ronald Hug­gins said the cor­po­ra­tion was treat­ing the mat­ter with ur­gency, with par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to the build­ing’s struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty and the safe­ty of its oc­cu­pants.

He said the HDC was al­so tak­ing se­ri­ous­ly res­i­dents’ con­cerns about re­ports made three years ago re­gard­ing the prop­er­ty’s con­di­tion. Those con­cerns would be re­viewed as part of the as­sess­ment of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent, he said.

Hug­gins added that the HDC would en­sure the nec­es­sary as­sess­ments were com­plet­ed and ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion tak­en to safe­guard the af­fect­ed res­i­dents.