A major house rebuilding programme will get underway soon in response to homes damaged during the passage of Hurricane Elsa.
This announcement came from Minister of Housing Dr William Duguid during Saturday’s live Government update on the damage from the storm.
Nothing that 62 homes were completely destroyed and 743 damaged roofs were reported as of Saturday, Duguid said Government had already agreed to facilitate the rebuilding of several properties within the next two days.
“Within 48 hours, we are going to try to get as many of the houses … started; we are dividing that between the Urban Development Commission (UDC), the Rural Development Commission (RDC) and the National Housing Corporation (NHC). There are certain geographic locations for UDC and RDC, and we’ll be following those, [and] with respect to the National Housing Corporation, we’ll be doing the houses that are wall and wood, masonry and carpentry.
“More importantly, when we rebuild these houses, we will be very specific on focusing on using roof straps and strapping the house to the foundation as well. I think that a lot of the houses that we are seeing problems with, both with the freak storm and with the hurricane that just passed, there are a lot of houses that did not have hurricane straps, and those that may have had some type of hurricane straps, did not also have the strapping from the foundation onto the house itself,” he explained.
The Minister also added that materials will be made available for those persons who can make the necessary repairs themselves, without the labour assistance from the Ministry.
