One house collapses, another demolished

A PRINCES TOWN man and his common-law-wife managed to survive after they were buried in the rubble of their house which collapsed while they were sleeping on Thursday night. It took five men, 30 minutes to free Melina Cooper, 38, and Jimmy Span, 42, from under the rubble. They suffered only minor injuries.

Cooper’s sister, Geraldine, 40, and her three children, Junior, 19, Wendy, four, and Winston, three, were also asleep in the front bedroom of the wooden/concrete house when it collapsed. Fortunately for them their bedroom and the porch were the only parts of the house left standing. The owner of the house, Horace Hodge, died two years ago. When Newsday visited yesterday Cooper and her husband locked themselves in the remaining bedroom and refused to come out. Speaking through a space in the door, Span said: “We was sleeping and we end up on the ground. But we alright.”        
   
Geraldine Cooper, who was late yesterday seeking shelter for herself and her three children, recalled that they were asleep on the same bed, when she was awaken by a loud noise.      “My oldest son shouted, ‘Mammy the house fall down’, and I started to call my sister,” she said. The unemployed woman said when she opened her door and saw that the rest of her house had collapsed she called out to the neighbours for help “My sister was bawling for help, saying that she can’t take the pain no more. She was buried under big pieces of concrete and pieces of wood. Only she head was outside,” she said. Cooper said her sister suffered a sprained ankle and bruises on her hip, while Span got a blow to his chest. She said her two youngest children went to school yesterday, but were not sure to have a place to sleep when they returned yesterday evening. Cooper said she depends on neighbours to help her with meals, adding that whatever food stuff she had was somewhere in the rubble.

A neighbour, Merle Clarke, 44, said she was asleep when she heard the crashing sound. Clarke said when she rushed to the house she saw the two children standing in the gallery. She said she took them up and carried them to her home. Clarke made an appeal to the public to assist Cooper and her three children, adding that she was willing to help them in anyway she could. Meanwhile, in another housing disaster, a 75-year-old pensioner was left homeless on Wednesday when a demolition crew destroyed her Princes Town home. However, 75-year-old Vera Rauseo promised yesterday that she would not let the matter rest.  The three bedroom house at 48 Craignish Road, Princes Town had been in the family for more than 70 years, she said, but a man is claiming otherwise.