A mis­placed key may have saved the life of a Ma­yaro mar­ket ven­dor.

Six­ty-sev­en-year-old Cal­iste Mod­este was forced to stay with a friend be­cause he could not find the keys to his home on Wednes­day evening.

He woke up to shock­ing news yes­ter­day morn­ing that overnight show­ers had re­sult­ed in his home at Alex­is Street col­laps­ing.

“I came in yes­ter­day evening (Wednes­day) from sell­ing in the mar­ket but I mis­placed the keys (to my home), else I was go­ing to be in with the rub­ble, crawl up some­time. So, God just make it hap­pen that I was not there,” he said.

While Mod­este was rent­ing the three-bed­room house, he had fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances which were dam­aged.

Now, he has been left with nowhere to go.

“I look­ing to see if I could use the rub­ble to build up some­thing,” he said.

How­ev­er, he ex­plained that the house was be­ing threat­ened for a few years by a con­crete re­tain­ing wall that was lean­ing to­wards it.

“They nev­er pay no at­ten­tion to it so when the rain fall, the wa­ter form un­der the foun­da­tion of the wall and every­thing just move,” Mod­este said.

Giv­en the sit­u­a­tion, Mod­este said he was ex­pect­ing that the house would have been dam­aged at some point.

“But, I was not look­ing out for it to crush up so,” he said.

He said a stove, fan, two tele­vi­sions, two beds, a DVD play­er and a deep freeze were all de­stroyed. The prop­er­ty, a three-bed­room house, is owned by 89-year-old Ri­ta Fran­cis and her hus­band Joseph, who passed away ear­li­er this year.

Sher­ry Ann Bayne, who is Fran­cis’ niece, said her aunt had made sev­er­al re­ports to the Ma­yaro Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion about a re­tain­ing wall that was cav­ing in and threat­en­ing the house.

“It seems to me that the cav­ing of the earth with the wall push it (house) down. It could be that but I am not a civ­il en­gi­neer,” she added.

She said the es­ti­mat­ed val­ue of the house could be close to $1 mil­lion.

Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ray­mond Co­zi­er and a crew from the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit vis­it­ed the site.

Grate­ful that no one was in­jured, Co­zi­er said, “It seems to be that due to the heavy show­ers that sat­u­rat­ed the soil and caused some land move­ment and the whole house col­lapsed. We have con­tact­ed T&TEC to come and dis­con­nect the wire and the DMU (dis­as­ter man­age­ment unit) is do­ing their as­sess­ment now.

We will have to con­tact Self Help (Com­mis­sion) to see how they could as­sist peo­ple to get some restora­tion to their life.”

Any­one will­ing to as­sist Mod­este can con­tact 315-7508.