Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Scores of res­i­dents of Fort George in St James were strand­ed for al­most 12 hours af­ter a sud­den land­slide on Christ­mas af­ter­noon.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the land­slide oc­curred at 4.20 pm on Wednes­day along Fort George Road.

The nar­row, steep and wind­ing road was ren­dered im­pass­able, as it was blocked by a large quan­ti­ty of de­bris and fall­en trees that once grew on the hill­side bound­ing it.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that with­in an hour of re­ceiv­ing a re­port, of­fi­cials from the Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion’s Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit (DMU) re­spond­ed to as­sess the ex­tent of the dam­age or re­store ac­cess in and out of the com­mu­ni­ty for many res­i­dents who live be­yond the lo­ca­tion of the land­slide.

They were as­sist­ed by of­fi­cials from the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, and the T&T Fire Ser­vice.

Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Symon de No­bri­ga al­so vis­it­ed the scene.

Ac­cess was even­tu­al­ly re­stored al­most 12 hours lat­er.

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the cor­po­ra­tion com­mend­ed its staff for their re­sponse.

“The bor­ough’s DMU has had both its teams on the ground work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly from last night to present, un­der­tak­ing an as­sess­ment of the block­age (due to the land­slide), and mo­bil­is­ing and work­ing close­ly with ex­ter­nal agen­cies re­moval of the land­slide,” it said.

“These teams were crit­i­cal in re­mov­ing fall­en trees that were cov­er­ing a res­i­dent’s home, even­tu­al­ly al­low­ing ac­cess in­to and out of the home,” it added.

It al­so praised fire of­fi­cers, who were among the first to re­spond.

“Their per­son­nel re­mained on the ground last night in­to this morn­ing en­sur­ing works con­tin­ued, as­sist­ing res­i­dents with evac­u­a­tion as need­ed and en­sur­ing that works did not pose any im­me­di­ate dan­ger to near­by prop­er­ties and their res­i­dents,” the DM­RC said.

It al­so thanked the min­istries for sup­ply­ing heavy equip­ment to clear the road.

When a news team from Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day, cor­po­ra­tion staff were still on the scene as­sess­ing their fi­nal task of cut­ting large tree limbs which re­mained on the roof of a three-storey house next to the land­slide.

The own­er of the house had just left and con­tact­ed via tele­phone hours lat­er, she de­clined to com­ment.

“I am not the kind of per­son who high­lights things in the me­dia to get help,” she said.

Res­i­dent Nicholas Nurse, who lives near­by, praised the re­sponse to the dis­as­ter.

“They worked tire­less­ly the whole night. They were very time­ly and ef­fec­tive in the sit­u­a­tion,” he said.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that the com­mu­ni­ty, which is home to the colo­nial for­ti­fi­ca­tion from which its name is de­rived, is usu­al­ly ne­glect­ed by au­thor­i­ties.

“The au­thor­i­ties have to come reg­u­lar­ly and main­tain the pow­er lines be­cause it is a haz­ard to every­body around, both res­i­dents and vis­i­tors. It is a tourist at­trac­tion. It has been too long since they main­tained this area,” he said.

Nurse said al­most two years ago his home was af­fect­ed by a small­er land­slide.

“It is mul­ti­ple times this hap­pen up here be­cause of low or no main­te­nance from the au­thor­i­ties,” he said.

While the cause of the land­slide was not im­me­di­ate­ly ap­par­ent and still has to be as­sessed, cor­po­ra­tion staff and res­i­dents, who asked to re­main uniden­ti­fied, the­o­rised it was caused by leak­ing wa­ter pipeline based on the fact that there was no rain that pre­ced­ed it (the land­slide).

They al­so point­ed out that the clumps of soil that were dis­lodged in the land­slide were no­tice­ably wa­ter-soaked com­pared to oth­er ar­eas along the road.