A mother and four of her six children narrowly escaped injury yesterday when their home crashed to the ground damaging its walls and flooring.
Latchmin Chanderpal was at the family’s 448 Eleventh Street, Foulis Housing Scheme, East Coast Demerara home yesterday morning and had only minutes before awakened, at some time after 6, when she felt the house shake, which sent items falling to the ground.
“I just feel a slight shake and things start falling down and them vase break up. And then I myself fall down and even then, I didn’t realize is what really happen. But the children was in the veranda so nothing didn’t happen to them,” the woman said.
When this newspaper arrived on the scene the house, which had been on six-foot posts, was flat on the ground and the occupants pointed out the destroyed flooring, windows and other areas.
The woman said her children would usually wake up early each morning and would play under the house with their bicycles. Yesterday, somehow, the children did not play downstairs.
Lalman Sanchar, the woman’s husband said he was at work when he learnt that his house, which he has lived in for over 12 years, had collapsed with his wife and children in it.
“Man when me get the message I thinking about them children and I study but is only God make nothing ain’t happen to these children or so,” the man, who is a fisherman, said.
He showed this newspaper the planks on which the foundation of the posts had rested, the posts and beams and vowed that none of them were rotten.
“Nothing like this never happen and I thank the father that nothing serious ain’t happen because none ah these pickney nah get one bruise,” he said.
Even though many of their possessions, including their beds, have been damaged, the family sought comfort in the fact that their fate could have been worse.
