by CHRIS GOLLOP NINETEEN HOURS after an apartment block collapsed into a cave at Brittons X Road, St Michael, the fate of a family of five buried beneath the rubble, remained unknown. It was just after 10:30 last night that Miami-Dade Rescue team with trained life sniffer dogs arrived at the scene to much cheering. However, up to Press time they had not entered the gaping hole. Buried under the rubble are husband Donavere, 30, and wife Cassandra Codrington, 27; along with three of their four children, seven-year-old Shaquanda, three-year-old Shaquille and one-year-old Yashiro. Their three-month-old child was staying with Cassandra's mother at the time of the incident. It was just after 2 a.m. yesterday that tenants in the five three-bedroom and two two-bedroom units first felt the building shaking. The rumbling shook some of the tenants living in Shalom Apartments from their sleep. "I was sleeping and I felt the tremors. I thought it was thunder so I went outside. I realised it wasn't thunder and then I said to myself - 'Earthquakes in Barbados'?" said Emily Anderson. That was just after 3 a.m. An hour and a half later, she rushed out of the building joining neighbouring tenants who had gathered outside. Then the unthinkable happened. The two-storey building vanished before their eyes deep into the earth. Not long after, it was realised that the Codrington family, who had moved into the apartment block two weeks previously, was trapped beneath the rubble. Crying out It was neighbour David Benn who raised the alarm. Minutes after the collapse he arrived on the scene and heard Codrington crying out for help from down below. He said his leg had been broken. "I went and looked down, he saw me and said 'I over on this side.' I could hear the children screaming on the other side, but I could not see them," said Benn. The next 15 hours would see the evacuation of residents living in the surrounding houses, a quickly assembled 200-strong emergency rescue team comprising personnel from all the essential services and a live televised broadcast by Prime Minister Owen Arthur and other Cabinet ministers - all of whom had visited the scene. Noting that the past few weeks had witnessed one tragedy after another, the Prime Minister commended all of those who had volunteered their help in what he described as a "crisis" situation. "Hopefully this will be one case with a happy ending," said Arthur. But as day turned into night and the hours counted down, hope was quickly fading among the hundreds of onlookers who had kept vigil all day at the scene of the event. They and the entire country then waited with bated breath on word from the12-member team, with their four trained dogs. "These dogs will detect any signs of life," Attorney-General Dale Marshall had announced earlier in the televised broadcast. But there may be as much as 20 feet of rubble on top of the apartment housing the Andersons, and up to midnight the fate of the family remained unknown. Arthur, like the rest of the nation, was however "not giving up faith". "I am hoping that they are all alive," said Shirley Linton, Cassandra's mother. "I got faith. I know my son is alive. It's a connection you just have," said Margaret Gibbs, Donavere's mum.
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