HDC apartment floor gives way, sending bedroom crashing downstairs

Two fam­i­lies are count­ing their bless­ings af­ter the floor sep­a­rat­ing their up­per- and low­er-lev­el apart­ments in Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) Build­ing Three on Ja­madar Street, San Fer­nan­do, col­lapsed in the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day. The col­lapse, which oc­curred around 1 am, sent the bed­room floor­ing, along with a bed and oth­er fur­ni­ture, crash­ing in­to the down­stairs apart­ment. No in­juries were re­port­ed.

Up­per-floor ten­ant Gail Mo­han-Thomas said the in­ci­dent came as lit­tle sur­prise, as the wood­en floor­ing had been crack­ing through­out the week. “We knew that this might have even­tu­al­ly hap­pened be­cause dur­ing the week, it start­ed crack­ing and crack­ing and crack­ing. It was around 12.58 and we just heard, like, boom, so we knew it fell,” she said. Mo­han-Thomas said she and her son were home alone at the time, while her hus­band was at work. She had al­ready moved her 16-year-old son in­to an­oth­er room af­ter notic­ing the floor in his bed­room de­te­ri­o­rat­ing fur­ther.

“Luck­i­ly, ear­li­er this month, we were able to move the wardrobe and his desk, but we were nev­er able to get to the bed. So the bed went down with all the oth­er things in the room,” she said. Mo­han-Thomas said they be­gan com­plain­ing to the HDC about the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing floor­ing three years ago. She was still fear­ful for their safe­ty, cit­ing oth­er com­pro­mised sec­tions of the floor­ing.