Residents of a section of Cooper’s Pen, Trelawny, were jolted from their slumber on Tuesday morning to find a demolition crew flattening their houses in a pre-dawn operation involving bulldozers, tractors, and sledgehammers.

When the hours-long exercise, carried out under the watchful eyes of a bailiff and a strong police contingent, ended, 20 predominantly concrete houses lay in ruins as their bewildered owners looked on in disbelief.

“This is a complete surprise. We got no warning or anything, so it is like we were ambushed,” a tearful woman lamented, adding that they were not even given a chance to secure their belongings.