Fear and frus­tra­tion are mount­ing in East­ern Quar­ry, Laven­tille, where res­i­dents are voic­ing deep con­cern over po­ten­tial land­slides and un­sta­ble slopes threat­en­ing their homes.

This comes af­ter a re­tain­ing wall col­lapsed on­to the home of a 44-year-old woman on Sun­day, dis­plac­ing her and leav­ing her to grap­ple with trau­ma and in­juries to her legs.

De­bra Woods told Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day she was thank­ful to be alive, af­ter heavy rain­fall over the week­end caused the re­tain­ing wall at an ad­ja­cent home to crash on­to her prop­er­ty on Sun­day.

When Guardian Me­dia re­turned to the area yes­ter­day, res­i­dent Ethel­bert Williams ex­plained that oth­er res­i­dents, in­clud­ing him­self, were fear­ful of an­oth­er ma­jor in­ci­dent dur­ing the Wet Sea­son. He said the com­mu­ni­ty, which is perched on slop­ing hills and is known for its pic­turesque views of Port-of-Spain, had been sus­cep­ti­ble to soil ero­sion over the years.

Asked if the col­lapsed wall was the on­ly in­ci­dent as a re­sult of earth move­ment, he lament­ed that it was not.

“Is years this go­ing on and no­body, no min­is­ter or no­body, say let we go in the back there and see, no­body. A wall over there had col­lapsed the same way and mash up some­body’s house in the quar­ry the very same way.”

He said he was par­tic­u­lar­ly fear­ful, as he does not have any sup­port­ing struc­ture to pre­vent earth move­ment on his prop­er­ty along As­sam Pri­vate Road, which could be af­fect­ed by in­clement weath­er in the fu­ture.

“Yes I have fears. I does pray every morn­ing when I get up and every night. Right through I does be pray­ing.”

Sun­day’s in­ci­dent has height­ened anx­i­ety in the hill­side com­mu­ni­ty, where homes were built pre­car­i­ous­ly close to steep slopes and rain­fall ex­ac­er­bates risks of land­slides.

Williams urged the au­thor­i­ties to vis­it the area and con­duct the nec­es­sary as­sess­ment.

“They not com­ing around in the neigh­bour­hood to walk about, if they come they will just dri­ve through. Right now is a sheet of deck­ing pan that I have here.”

He al­so re­spond­ed to the ar­gu­ment that build­ing along the hilly ter­rain was a risk res­i­dents took.

“We can’t go West­moor­ings, and where we get to build, we have to build.”

In an off-cam­era in­ter­view, Leeann Bap­tiste, the daugh­ter of the home­own­er whose wall col­lapsed on­to Woods’ home on Sun­day, ex­plained that af­ter the 6.8 mag­ni­tude earth­quake in 2018 her fam­i­ly erect­ed the wall as a lay­er of pro­tec­tion. She said de­spite ef­forts to get as­sis­tance from the au­thor­i­ties, her fam­i­ly end­ed up tak­ing a loan and hir­ing a Point Fortin con­trac­tor for the job.

“We get tired wait­ing for as­sis­tance so we hired the con­trac­tor. The con­trac­tor didn’t put no weep holes for the drains. If you watch on the wall you not see­ing no drainage pipes for the wa­ter when the rainy sea­son start. He did put at the bot­tom when he was start­ing it but af­ter that height, noth­ing. He al­so didn’t fin­ish cast the col­umn and in­ter­lock the con­crete,” she said, adding they were look­ing at their le­gal op­tions in that mat­ter.

Bap­tiste said they fear that with­out any re­in­force­ment, their prop­er­ty can slip down­hill. She not­ed that since the in­ci­dent, her moth­er had sub­mit­ted doc­u­ments to the rel­e­vant agen­cies, in­clud­ing the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, for as­sis­tance.

Up to news time, ef­forts to con­tact Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee and Min­is­ter of Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices were un­suc­cess­ful. Woods had in­di­cat­ed on Mon­day that she need­ed al­ter­na­tive hous­ing and oth­er help as most of her be­long­ings were de­stroyed in the in­ci­dent.

MP, en­gi­neer ad­vise res­i­dents to seek guid­ance

Port-of-Spain MP Ka­reem Mar­celle has vis­it­ed the site and spoke with af­fect­ed res­i­dents, in­clud­ing Woods.

While he pledged to ad­vo­cate for the nec­es­sary works to be con­duct­ed to pro­tect ex­ist­ing prop­er­ties in the area, he al­so em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of res­i­dents seek­ing prop­er ap­provals be­fore start­ing con­struc­tion projects, par­tic­u­lar­ly in vul­ner­a­ble hill­side ar­eas in Laven­tille.

“One of the things that we must stress on when con­duct­ing these works such as re­tain­ing walls and so on, is that per­sons ap­ply to the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and to Town and Coun­try in or­der so that they meet the spe­cif­ic guide­lines rel­a­tive to the in­fra­struc­ture ex­per­tise. This will en­sure that sound and strong work is be­ing car­ried out even with gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance.”

Mean­while, ge­ot­ech­ni­cal en­gi­neer Dr Derek Gay is urg­ing home­own­ers and de­vel­op­ers to care­ful­ly eval­u­ate crit­i­cal safe­ty fac­tors be­fore se­lect­ing build­ing sites on hilly ter­rain.

Dr Gay, known for his ex­per­tise in ge­ot­ech­ni­cal risk as­sess­ment, em­pha­sised that hill­side de­vel­op­ment de­mands thor­ough ge­ot­ech­ni­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion and prop­er en­gi­neer­ing de­sign.

“Do a his­to­ry on the site to see if it is rock or silt be­cause in quar­ries, they quar­ry out the rocks but what they then do is push over the de­bris down the slope and a lot of the time what we see is de­bris slopes, which re­al­ly is loose ma­te­r­i­al con­sol­i­dat­ed over the years and its very porous.”

He stressed the im­por­tance of wa­ter run-off when erect­ing walls and drainage along hilly ar­eas.

“Where does the wa­ter run off around your house? ... The main thrust is to con­trol the ingress of wa­ter in­to your soil in what­ev­er way.”

Gay fur­ther ag­i­tat­ed for builders and home­own­ers to abide by hill­side con­struc­tion reg­u­la­tions and for home­own­ers to seek pro­fes­sion­al guid­ance when build­ing on slopes.