THE August 26, 2007 Arch Cot cave-in can be blamed on the geology of Barbados, poor land use and the need to be our neighbour’s keeper, says Coroner Faith Marshall-Harris.
Giving the verdict and a three-and-a-half-hour summary of the 13-month Arch Cot Enquiry in the Coroner’s Court yesterday, Marshall-Harris said the reasons for the collapse were many, but “human intervention by way of poor land use, as well as the use of neighbouring land and whether that did not in fact disturb the integrity of adjoining property” were among them.
“There was the existence of a cave which was thrown up hundreds of thousands of years ago and would have collapsed in time but … in terms of what we have heard in this evidence, we [human beings] did whatever we could to ensure its swift demise,” she stated.
“There was, of course, the work underneath the cave by the entrance: the mining, the quarrying, the blasting with dynamite. There was, of course, up above, the subdividing of land and placing houses on top of sinkholes and caves without any proper investigation. It is the lack of investigation as to how we use our natural resource,” she added, noting that many other signs had been ignored.
The coroner also blasted the record-keeping relating to land use in Barbados, stating that the current Chief Town Planner and his department may have been “victims of history” and an apparent haphazard system of information gathering.
“There does not seem to be within the Town Planning office a lot of information regarding specific sites, and one wonders whether they are sufficiently equipped or staffed to ensure that they know everything they should. . . . This information is necessary to inform their decisions regarding applications.
“Caves in a locale should somehow be systematically recorded and the institutional memory preserved. In this case, it seems to have been lost from one generation to the other,” she explained.
However, since it was now known that Barbados was a network of caves, the coroner said residents must act accordingly.
“As a result, modern developments will have to be carefully monitored.
I would want to see geotechnical investigation being mandatory in places where there is some history of fragility.”
Turning to the effortto rescue Donavere Codrington, his wife and their three children, who perished just before dawn when their apartment collapsed, Marshall-Harris said Donavere and the children had lived for some time afterwards, and therefore concerns had to be expressed about the rescue effort.
“I would say for the rescue team it was a first for Barbados, and to some extent there was a great degree of shock. Nevertheless, this court would want to make some recommendations about the lack of equipment, coordination or unpreparedness for such dramatic events, because as we live, there is no reason to suggest that we will not ever have to relive such an event,” she said.
“It also had to do with how much are you your neighbour’s keeper,” she said, lauding the efforts of the Benn brothers Lionel and David who had warned excavators about the possible cave-in, as well as Barbados Defence Force soldier Peter Burgess who had retrieved the bodies from the yawning chasm. (RJ)
