Roof falling to pieces at Hanover Municipal Corporation

Western Bureau:

People wondered if it was going to be a repeat of what transpired in the building shared by the Trelawny Municipal Corporation (TMC) and the Trelawny Parish Court in March 22, when pieces of plaster began falling out of the roof of the Hanover Municipal Corporation’s (HMC) office complex last Thursday during a heavy downpour of rain in Lucea.

While the plaster fell to the ground on the landing of the staircase on the first floor of the Georgian-sttyle building, water poured in through the compromised section of the roof, and soaked right through to affect offices on the ground floor of the complex.

A bucket was eventually set to catch the water as it fell from the roof, with a view to preventing it from soaking down to the ground floor.

When contacted, David Gardner, chief executive officer of the HMC, told The Gleaner that he could not speak to the integrity of the roof before the technical officers of the corporation have assessed it, and forwarded a report to him.

TMC ROOF COLLAPSE

A section of the roof on the Georgian-style building in Falmouth, Trelawny, that houses the Trelawny Parish Court, collapsed a little over two months ago, while court was in session. Court proceedings had to be transferred to the section of the building that houses the TMC for the rest of that day.

With respect to the Hanover building, Sheridan Samuels, mayor of Lucea and chairman of the HMC, was very forthright in his explanation of the cause of the leaking HMC building roof, stating that it is not a new problem, but an ongoing one, which can be remedied with some amount of maintenance.

“What really happen is, because of how the building was built, there is a gutter at the top with which we have challenges from a long time ago,” he stated.

“We normally have persons going up there and cleaning that gutter, so whenever it is not cleaned properly that (the leak) is what happens,” he stated, adding that as far as he knows, a maintenance person has already been contacted to do the necessary cleaning.

Samuels pointed out that the chief engineering officer of the HMC has already got the assessment done, and the agency is on the verge of getting the complete repairs for the gutter, that is necessary, done.

“I can safely say to you that the whole situation is all because of a maintenance problem, and it is sad that it has to reach this level because knowing the history of the place I have reported it to the Roads and Works department before,” he stated.

He argued that it is the ongoing rains in the parish why the workmen have not been able to do the repairs to the gutter before.