Up until today - and maybe for the last 100 years or so, a sturdy wooden structure stood at #118 Eve Street on the sea front. It was in a deteriorated state, badly leaning, but even in that state, it survived Hurricane Lisa, like it had many storms before. And that may be because of its resilient design. One graduate student pointed out to NICH that it resembled traditional buildings that can also be found elsewhere in the Caribbean and parts of the US. The home might have been preserved under NICH's National Cultural Preservation Act, but that only exists on paper - so, instead, today, it was demolished.
According to the City Planner, Carla Patnett, once deteriorated homes are deemed unsafe, they alert the homeowners that the building will either need to be demolished or repaired. In this case, a dangerous building notice was published in the Amandala in March 2023.
However, Patnett explained that the family that partially occupied the home removed the belongings they had in storage, and today, the house came down. Here's what she told us off camera.
Voice of: Carla Patnett, City Planner, Belize CitCo
"The building as you can see physically when you pass by is in a state of deterioration and it has been for a while and so here at the Belize City Council we have a process where we detect buildings that are in a state of deterioration and we start a process where we identify the owners of these buildings and we communicate with them to address the state of these buildings."
"Some of them are unoccupied, some of them are occupied. This one in particular has been that way for a while and it's been occupied you would say partially and that is how the process of the buildings started for the detection of what could be done for the building."
"The family that occupies the parcel of land is of course aware of the far deterioration of the building and so they have a family home in the rear of this building and so they have furniture, they use it as a store room and they go in and out but they didn't physically reside in the building."
"There are two structures on the parcel, the deteriorated one on Eve Street side and there's a family home in the rear of that parcel."
Reporter
"But their structure is fine?"
Voice of: Carla Patnett, City Planner, Belize CitCo
"That structure is fine, it's a one-story structure."
The demolition crew on site told us that despite its dilapidated appearance, the structure was remarkably sturdy and took great effort to bring down.
