KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Many res­i­dents of In­di­an Walk, Princes Town were forced to walk through a ditch or the bush­es to get to and from their home af­ter the road col­lapsed on Tues­day night af­ter a por­tion of the Moru­ga Main Road col­lapsed.

It was rem­i­nis­cent of those nat­ur­al dis­as­ters shown in movies as res­i­dents were alert­ed of a rum­bling be­fore a seg­ment of the road­way be­gan slip­ping.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the land­slip, which ex­ist­ed for the past five years and has de­stroyed sev­er­al homes, was un­der re­pairs when the road col­lapse.

Res­i­dents blamed a per­sis­tent leak from a wa­ter line un­der the road for the sud­den slip­page. They said that de­spite sev­er­al com­plaints to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, no long-term so­lu­tion was im­ple­ment­ed.

So haz­ardous was the land­slip that earth un­der a res­i­dent’s prop­er­ty had erod­ed, leav­ing the foun­da­tion ex­posed.

De­vi­ka Ram­baran, a Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion em­ploy­ee was re­turn­ing home from work around 11 am when the dri­ver of the taxi she was trav­el­ling in dropped her a few hun­dred me­tres from her home as it was un­able to pass.

Walk­ing with a slight limp, Ram­baran stood near the land­slip as Carib As­phalt Paver Ltd dug fur­ther in­to an ex­ca­vat­ed area while a WASA crew car­ried out the work.

With nowhere else to go, the work crews even­tu­al­ly stopped their ma­chines so that Ram­baran could walk care­ful­ly along the drain to get home.

“I find they take too long to fix this caved land here. This has been threat­en­ing to fall a good while now. My hus­band pass through Lengua Road to drop me to the work, but I had to trav­el back and the taxis are not go­ing any fur­ther. I have to pass here to get home,” she said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Sal­isha Kadill al­so had to risk walk­ing through the ditch to get home.

Petal Dook­ie, whose home and bar is op­po­site the land­slip, said it has al­so af­fect­ed sales. Dook­ie said she had to stop cook­ing for cus­tomers as the bar was now in­ac­ces­si­ble to some and too close to the land­slip.

Dook­ie said that cracks have al­so be­gun to form on her wall and un­like oth­er neigh­bours who were forced to move, her busi­ness is her fam­i­ly’s liveli­hood.

She re­called, “I was stand­ing here wash­ing my car and I was see­ing the road sink­ing and go­ing down. With­in hours, the road just col­lapsed and there was wa­ter gush­ing,” Dook­ie said. She said two cars got stuck as the road­way col­lapsed.

Work on­go­ing to fix road—Sinanan

Moru­ga/Table­land MP Dr Lovell Fran­cis said the con­trac­tor had to as­sist in re­mov­ing a car out of the col­lapsed road­way.

Fran­cis, who was at the land­slip, said that there were a 16-inch and a 12-inch WASA line un­der the road, one of which rup­tured for the sec­ond time. He said this un­der­mined the work of the con­trac­tor to fix the re­pairs.

He said the in­ten­tion was to have the road re­open by to­day. Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, at a sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the Diego Mar­tin Pedes­tri­an Over­pass, said yes­ter­day, he was con­fi­dent that WASA could have com­plet­ed the re­pairs by end of yes­ter­day.

“Last night we recog­nised there was a prob­lem in the Moru­ga area, where due to a rup­tured WASA line the en­tire area was cut off. My in­for­ma­tion again from the PURE unit is that they have en­gi­neers and a con­trac­tor on site and once the re­pairs by WASA have been com­plet­ed we will have that con­nec­tiv­i­ty back on­line,” Sinanan said.