Nine months after a retaining wall collapsed behind his home, landlord John Roach has been left wondering when the debris will stop pouring into the backyard of his Perimeter Lane, Devonshire residence.

A weekend of heavy rains has brought a renewed torrent of rocks, sand and concrete blocks tumbling down from the site alongside Palmetto Road that fell on the property in the early hours of February 14.

“It would be nice for us all to move in, but we can’t,” said Mr Roach, standing in the spill of wet sand below the house where two upstairs residences remain vacant, nine months after the collapse.

“Government have been working on it. But the work has been all stretched out. I don’t know what’s happening with it, or when it’s going to be done.”

He acknowledged that Public Works Minister Patricia Gordon-Pamplin had responded quickly to his call, and had visited the house over the weekend.

Ms Gordon-Pamplin told The Royal Gazette that Public Works would come to Mr Roach’s aid, even if just with sandbags, to stem the flow of rubble off the cliff.

With last month’s hurricane damage, Mr Roach also conceded that Government workers would be busy on other jobs.

“I understand everybody else had something going on too, but we’re going on close to a year now,” he said, pointing to the trail of washed-out debris that had poured into his yard and flooded down his driveway. “Every day we come out and something new has happened.”

The westbound lane of Palmetto Road has been closed off, with temporary lights in place, since the initial collapse. Mr Roach remembers “a loud bang, and then water gushing down”.

A holding tank had collected runoff, he said, allowing it to seep slowly away. Its collapse sent a slab of concrete down the hillside, crushing a shed behind the homes.

A new shelter was being built even as fresh rivers of sand and rock came off the hillside. Mr Roach said it was required as a utility shed for pumps and electrical equipment, meaning his upstairs tenants can’t move in until the job is complete.

Mr Roach said an excavator had been sent recently to dig a trench below the road, although he hadn’t been told its exact purpose. With heavy rains starting on Friday, makeshift efforts to divert the water did not hold up.

“We can come out here and watch it coming down when it rains,” he said. “It’s always going to be somewhat of a problem. I suggested to the Minister that while engineers are trying to figure it out, they could build a temporary wall. It just seems that nobody knows what the plan is.”