A massive landslide Thursday night destroyed a house in Buddy Gutter, near the VINLEC power station and fuel storage facility in Lowmans Bay.
No one was in the house at the time, Emmanuel Marshall, whose parents and brother had moved out one day before, told iWitness News.
(Scroll for our video interview with Marshall.)
Marshall, a nursing student who lives at another house in the village where he is housesitting for a friend, said his mother, father and brother had moved out of the one bedroom, wooden house on Wednesday when cracks began appearing around it after Tuesday’s heavy rain.
The rains, which resulted from a trough system, caused flood and landslides across the country and damaged at least 38 houses.
This is truly heartbreaking.
It never ceases to amaze me that hundreds more houses built on steep slopes, in riverbeds, or beside the sea with no proper surveying or architectural and engineering design, no zoning inspections, using poor construction techniques, and lacking back walls or surrounding deep gutters have not been destroyed.
This is surely based on tremendously good luck and the will of God.
I know that in a poor country with even poorer building standards and construction regulations — and even poorer enforcement of what regulations we have — these sorts of tragedies are bound to happen.
But all of us — government, builders, and homeowners — should roll up our sleeves and do a better job of locating, excavating, protecting, constructing, and inspecting new homes.
Unfortunately, since “should” and “would” are antithetical concepts in our backward country, this will never happen.