SASCHA WIL­SON

Sev­er­al fam­i­lies are in tur­moil af­ter four homes at Belle View Vil­lage, Clax­ton Bay, col­lapsed this morn­ing.  Mean­while, oth­er hous­es close by are un­der threat. 

While there have been no re­ports of in­juries, res­i­dents have been left in a state of fear, pan­ic and wor­ry. One house plum­met­ed as far as 200 feet down a hill.

Res­i­dent Giles Gar­cia re­called how he and his fam­i­ly had to scam­per out of their home around 3 am when their house be­gan falling apart.  He re­called:

"We had tiles falling out the kitchen, tiles mov­ing on the floor, and I got up and tried to open the bath­room door and the bath­room door could not open.  When I re­alised the bath­room door could not open, I re­alise that some­thing was wrong, so I woke up my fam­i­ly and I told them ‘let us get out of here, this thing look like it more se­ri­ous than we think’.”

Gar­cia told Guardian Me­dia: “From there we moved the ve­hi­cles out of the yard.  To pass over the open­ing on the road we had to put red bricks to full it so that the ve­hi­cle could have passed over but we did get through. The house start mov­ing… it start to sink first and then it start to slide."

Gar­cia said at that mo­ment he was just think­ing about his fam­i­ly's safe­ty. 

Res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia they had no­ticed the land move­ment about four days ago. In a Face­book post, Pointe a Pierre MP David Lee said the dis­as­ter was as a re­sult of quar­ry­ing.

"I have just called the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Sen­a­tor Clarence Ramb­harat to com­pen­sate the fam­i­lies who have lost their homes in Belle Vue, Wind­sor Park, due to quar­ry­ing at this lo­ca­tion and launch an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this grave oc­cur­rence,” MP Lee stat­ed.

The Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit (DMU) at the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) has con­firmed that it re­ceived re­ports of sev­er­al homes be­ing af­fect­ed by land move­ment at Lp#45 Di­a­mond Road Bel View, Clax­ton Bay.

“The area is in the vicin­i­ty of EM­BD's sand quar­ry. The DMU field of­fi­cers, EM­BD of­fi­cials and elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives are cur­rent­ly in the area,” a state­ment from the Cor­po­ra­tion said, in­di­cat­ing that fur­ther up­dates will be pro­vid­ed as more in­for­ma­tion is avail­able.