Residents had to sleep in a church after homes close to a major building site in Charlton partially collapsed on Saturday evening.
Part of the frontage of three houses on Woodland Terrace, which were built in the 1830s, fell onto the pavement, leaving masonry strewn across the street.
London Fire Brigade said that six fire engines attended after an emergency call at 6.42pm. Nobody was hurt in the incident.
Residents have been told they cannot return until a structural engineer declares that their homes are safe. While most were being put up by friends and relatives, a handful of people had to spend a second night in St Thomas’s Church on Sunday.
One resident said officials at the church had been “amazing” in dealing with the incident.
Woodland Terrace remained closed on Monday, with the 380 bus route diverted away from the area.
Neighbours have been left to speculate on the cause of the collapse. The homes are in between two major building sites as part of a joint venture between the developer Lovell and Greenwich Council to replace the old Morris Walk and Maryon Grove estates. While ten years ago, a sinkhole opened up on the street, a short distance from the site of this weekend’s incident, almost swallowing a parked car.
Helen Jakeways, who lives in the affected row of terraced houses, has had to spend two nights away from home with friends, alongside her dog, Breeze.
When she spoke to The Greenwich Wire on Monday, she said she did not know when she would be able to return to her home.
She said: “I was in my kitchen, at the back, and I heard a big crunch. I thought, is it a crane falling over? So I didn’t do anything about it. And then I heard loads of sirens, and they all stopped. Then I thought, that’s close to home.
“So I came out, and I was like: ‘Oh my God.’ The fire brigade turned up pretty quickly and took over from the police, and said: ‘You’ve got to get out.”
Some of her neighbours had to clamber over rubble to get out, Jakeways said.
She had a key to St Thomas’s Church and contacted the churchwarden, Jim Kinsella, and his wife, Sheila, who helped evacuees along with the vicar, Rev Liz Newman.
“Jim and Sheila just came straight down when I rang them up and said, ‘Can I open up?’” she said. “Originally only the affected houses were evicted, and there were about five people in the church.
“Then some at some point during the night, the structural surveyor said everyone had to go. So loads more turned up at two in the morning and Jim had to come down again. The church has been amazing.”
Jakeways said the situation had been “frightening and scary”.
“In the church, Sheila just looked at me and she said, ‘You need to eat something because I think you’re in shock, Helen,’” she recalled. “Then somebody else said to me, ‘I’ve never seen you looking so white.’”
Residents are still trying to understand quite what happened. While Woodland Terrace sits between two major building sites, this year’s heatwaves have been linked with a risk of subsidence, while there also been questions about the quality of the buildings and the stability of the ground.
Jakeways now faces having to deal with the insurance implications of what happened – on top of having to spend time away from home and away from work.
“I’ve got a freezer full of food that will be dead because they turned the power off,” she said. “My insurer is saying, until you can tell us a cause, we can’t even tell you whether you’re covered or not. I don’t even know whether there’s any damage, but I’m still going to have suffered freezer contents. And I’ve just seen they’ve cut my broadband off too.”
Terry Green, a neighbour who lives in another block, said that immediately after the collapse, “when you could see in the lofts, I thought there was nothing holding those parapets there. They were all cracked and suffering from a lack of maintenance, and they just fell”.
“There is a history of instability in the ground around here,” he said. “The unsafe state of that parapet, plus a little bit of movement in the ground was probably enough to tip the balance. It looks more like jerry-building than anything else.”
A Lovell spokesperson said: “Lovell is aware of the incident at Woodland Terrace and our thoughts are with the residents affected. We are liaising with the relevant parties to understand the circumstances. At this stage, there is no established link between the incident and Lovell’s nearby works, and it would be inappropriate to speculate on the cause. We will provide a further update when the facts are clearer.”
Local Woolwich Dockyard ward councillors Asli Mohammed and Raja Zeeshan were at the scene of the collapse on Monday talking to residents.
Greenwich Council said: “We are prioritising the safety and welfare of those affected by the partial collapse of several private properties on Woodland Terrace in Charlton.
“Council officers are providing support to residents affected to address their immediate and longer term accommodation needs, and a dangerous structures engineer is currently assessing the safety of the site.”
Updated at 2.15pm with comment from Lovell, at 3pm with comment from Greenwich Council, and at 4.30pm to clarify the location where the incident happened. Interviews with neighbours added at 1.50pm on Monday.
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