Another section of the towering wall around the Jack’s property in Ratho Mill collapsed Sunday night, a decade after a similar event claimed one life.
Disaster responders have ordered that the road outside the property remain closed after the collapse, which came amidst continuous heavy rain over the past week.
The wall made headlines when, on Sept. 19, 2008, it collapsed, crushing 67-year-old Patricia Jack-Bowman, who was driving at the time.
That section of the retaining wall has since been rebuilt with technical guidance from the University of the West Indies.
A section of the original wall on another side of the property collapsed Sunday night.
No one was charged in connection with Bowman’s death although a coroner’s inquest ruled that she died of manslaughter, occasioned by the negligence of the contractors and engineers.
Her widower was advised to bring a civil suit against those involved.
Photographer Steve Wallace has published, on Facebook, the following dramatic images of Sunday night’s event.
Patricia Jack-Bowman’s husband Alban was robbed of the right to sue for compensation by the ULP government. This was a most disgraceful matter Alban should have got unequivocal government support, instead for some warped reason the Jacks got that support. A matter of the victims being punished.
The section of the wall which previously collapsed killing Patricia Jack-Bowman was rebuilt with poured concrete and steel to a special safe engineering standard. This piece of wall was the old stone structure which was unable to support the weight of the wet back-filled area. Any and every engineer should have know that the current collapse was imminent.
The Jacks should now be made to pull the house down because that is unstable also, full of movement cracks. They might like to call them settlement cracks, they are not they are movement cracks. The house was built to industrial standards using ‘I’ section steel girders, so if it falls the house will most probably topple down the new cliff face in one twisted piece.
It’s funny because I have been watching the wall and took a look only last week, there were cracks you could insert your arm into behind the vines, which hid those cracks. I am not the only one who knew about the cracks.
Julian Francis has said that there is no threat to the road, there is. A section of the old stone wall still exists to a staunching which is part of the new wall. This section will fall into the road and also has major cracks next to the staunching where old meets new.