More landslides lick Gordon Town road - Father hanging on to hope as home in jeopardy
Published:Monday | November 9, 2020 | 12:14 AMJason Cross/Gleaner Writer
A family in the Jacks Hill-Gordon Town main road region of the rain-ravaged St Andrew East Rural constituency hurriedly evacuated their home following a massive landslide on Sunday that threatened their abode and livelihoods.
Clifton Whyte said on Sunday night that after a Gleaner news team left the premises earlier, the family’s worst fears were realised when a wall collapsed on to their home.
Even as his daughter, Tishana Whyte, six-month-old grandson, and babymother Juliet Thompson moved to safer ground, Whyte was a lone figure waiting out storm rains with a tenuous grasp on hope. Word that a flash flood warning continues today is a grim reminder that he could be in store for more rain pain.
Whyte still doesn’t know exactly why he is hanging around.
“It sad still, but mi cyaa fly up inna God face,” he said.
Whyte’s family crisis is one of many frightening scenes unfolding along the Gordon Town main road, which was hit by a series of landslides on Saturday and Sunday, blocked vehicular movement and threatening life and limb.
Boulders, trees, and soil were clawed from the hillsides on to the Gordon Town main road as rains pounded swathes of Jamaica, the outer bands of Tropical Storm Eta dumping rain bombs at will.
“I’ve been up here for about 42 years now, and it’s the first this land slide. We never had this situation before,” Whyte said of the lands surrounding his home on Sunday afternoon.
Watching the slippages coming closer and closer to her house, Tishana said the family had nowhere to go and was playing wait-and-see, even while terrified. Little did she know that she would have been forced to flee her home before nightfall.
“I have a baby boy and we don’t have anywhere to go right now, so we have to be watching, so if anything, we will have to run out and go cotch with a family member,” she told The Gleaner.
Thompson said that she was so traumatised, she couldn’t cook Sunday dinner.
“Fi bruk weh, a dats all me fraid a because the rain is tearing,” she said.
On the flat lands of Olympic Way, yards in the vicinity of Fourth Street were transformed into ponds.
Cornal Williams, an elderly man, expressed frustration, saying he could not bear any more displacement.
“A from dem dig up di road. We have to have something done. I cya tek it,” Williams said.