Churches take a hit

Buildings in and around TT suffered damages after yesterday’s 6.9 magnitude earthquake and some of those badly damaged were historical churches like the Holy Trinity cathedral on Abercromby Street, Port of Spain.

While The Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Port of Spain remains closed for one week starting August 22 “to facilitate cleaning and repair works following Tuesday’s 6.9 magnitude earthquake.”

When Newsday visited the Trinity cathedral yesterday it was told by Shelly-Ann Tenia the cathedral’s dean and rector that restoration of the 200-year-old building might now cost $70 to $75 million and asked for any assistance to repair it. She said the church was scheduled to start emergency works this week to “take care of some leaks, guttering, removing the plaster from the interior walls because we have had some ingress of water based on the rains from before.”

The cathedral’s services were suspended yesterday and today with Tenia saying they will keep the public updated as quickly as it can but, unless all of the rubble was removed, the boulder out and the place cleaned up, the suspension of services might actually run into Friday.

Tenia said there were damages to the exterior and interior of the building. With the exterior damage being falling buttresses, falling fillials, masonry that got loose and fell off. She added that some masonry were not loose but were shaken loose by the earthquake. A lot of that damage, she said, is on the northern and eastern side of the building.

One car was damaged yesterday because of the falling fillials and buttresses, some of which fell off into the car park.

On the inside, Tenia said, there were new cracks in the eastern wall and some other places. On one section on the eastern side, a boulder fell into the roof and there is now a hole in roof, she added. The engineers she said were working on a strategy to get the boulder out as well as to deal with some buttresses which did not fall but are bent.

The church, she said, is trying to preserve the materials as the restoration work happens.

The church knew there was work to be done and that is why it had started putting its emergency works into place. “The emergency works were to start this week. And those would have taken about a month to three months. It would have been the emergency works that would have happened simultaneously with a dilapidation survey.

“We started on the northern side and would have worked non-stop for the next two /three weeks because the opening of the law term is scheduled for September 17. We were trying to organise to have the use of the entire church. Because of the last set of rains we have portions of the rendering fall off and damage the fuse and the lights so we were trying to take care of that.

“So that is going to continue. The dilapidation survey is intended to give us a detailed account of every single aspect. My take on the earthquake is that God has also facilitated a very through dilapidation survey so that we will not at all be confused about the extent of the restoration that is needed,” she said.

The emergency works, she said, costs approximately $900,000 and while saying that the dilapidation survey would give a more accurate picture of the actual cost of restoration works she added that the church ball-parked a cost of $70 to $75 million. Tenia said the actual restoration work will take about five years.

Engineers and the assistant acting chief architect came in and did their inspection and will do a report. While the Port of Spain corporation building inspector came and also did a walk through. The diocese’s engineer has also done a through walk through, she said.

“We just want to make sure the assessments are done and we have some accurate information to share with the public and the congregation,” Tenia said.

In a release to media the catholic church said there was damage to the “roof above the sacristy, furniture, and other decorative elements in the nave, (but) structural engineers determined that the integrity of the 167-year-old Heritage building is significantly intact.”

The catholic church’s vicar general and cathedral administrator Fr Martin Sirju said assessments are ongoing. The church could not provide a monetary assessment of the damages since assessments are ongoing.

The release added that “there will be no weekend and weekday masses at the cathedral. Masses will take place at the Sacred Heart RC Church, corner of Richmond and Sackville streets. With mass times taking place at 6.30 am Monday through Friday; 12 pm and 5 pm on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; 7 am and 6 pm on Saturday; and 6.30 am, 9 am, 11 am and 6 pm on Sunday.”

Roxanne Stapleton-Whyms, manager corporate communications of the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (Udecott) when asked about the Red House said that there were a couple of “surface aesthetic cracks but no structural damage at all.”

She said the Red House has undergone complete retrofitting based on current seismic codes to be able to withstand earthquakes.