Family homeless as house collapses

THE TREES are the ceiling and the stars the night lights for an East Dry River mother of six, whose home came crashing down on Carnival Tuesday. Marlene “Charmaine” Andrews of Laventille Road, East Dry River, and her 13-year-old daughter Shirnel are now forced to sleep on a mattress under a tree, near where her house once stood. The other five of her six children and her three-month-old grandson are now also in desperate need of shelter.

Reliving the nightmare, Andrews explained that she left her home to go shopping in Port-of-Spain and while there, a neighbour informed her that her house had fallen and they were only able to save her refrigerator and a few pieces of clothing. She said she immediately returned home to find her house completely destroyed. The distraught woman said water had been undermining her home for quite a while. She said there was a pipe in the wall next to her home which has been leaking for some time. She explained that she fixed the leak “over and over,” but it kept bursting open and “wetting up” the yard.

The unemployed woman said she made several complaints, but nothing was ever done to deal with the problem, “and now my entire home and all my possessions gone. I have nothing to my name right now except for a few pieces of clothing the neighbours saved when the house fell.” Andrews said while she would be thankful for any assistance she could get to rebuild her home,  she would be even more appreciative if someone give her a home somewhere else. “I would really prefer to move from that spot because I feel if I build back my house on that same spot, it would only fall down again because the problem with the water still exists.”

She noted that her children were being housed at several different homes until she could find some way of sorting out the problem. Meantime, Andrews is spending her nights underneath a tree at Laventille Road trying to figure out what her next move would be. “I don’t know how I am going to move on. I don’t even know what my children or I are going to eat. I guess we will survive by the grace of God, you know, you have to put trust in him and know that he will be looking out for you,” said Andrews.