PHYLLIS CUMBERBATCH?and her two children are living in fear in their home at Vaughn Road, No. 1, St Joseph.
A huge section of the road has completely collapsed, making it impassable to vehicular traffic and extremely dangerous for pedestrians to use.
But with nowhere to go, Cumberbatch and her children have chosen to stay put, even though their house is in the danger zone.
She and a relative, who lives next door, are the only two residents along the stretch of damaged road.
“At night I?could hear the house slowly slipping. The shop I?have attached to the house has moved off the props and the breadfruit trees in the backyard have already gone into the gully.
I?am very scared,” the 41-year-old woman cried as she hugged her four-month-old baby.
The woman explained that a section of the road first collapsed in 2008.
She recalled that cracks began to appear in the road, and one day she slipped and fell and up to this day she still suffers from back pain.
Cumberbatch explained that on the night when Tropical Storm Tomas passed she and her children took refuge at her boyfriend’s house at Braggs Hill in the same parish, but the roof of that house blew off.
She said she was relieved when she returned home to find that her house was still intact but was horrified at the condition of the road.
It had collapsed more, the cracks were wider and breakages of the surface more severe.
Now she and her children have to carefully navigate their way around the cracks in the road and because the road has sunk they have to climb up broken rocks to get on level ground.
In addition, they now have to walk a considerable distance to access public transportation.
Cumberbatch said officials from the Soil Conservation Unit had visited the area and informed her that they would have to investigate a nearby spring to see if it was affecting the road’s surface.
Meanwhile, workmen from the Ministry of Transport and Works (MTW) placed road closure signs at both ends of the road.
“It got me up and down. Nobody has told me anything, but the road is pulling in three different directions and all the trees are going down,” she said.
When contacted, public relations officer of MTW, Avonda Scott, said Acting Chief Technical Officer Dave Scantlebury reported that there was a complete collapse of the road at Vaughn Road, No.1 and the ministry was carrying out investigations.