It is now more than five months since Emma Tullett’s family home in Eastchurch plunged over a cliff edge, yet she is still no closer to any answers.

The bungalow in Surf Crescent - called Cliffhanger - collapsed on June 2, four days after another landslide.

“I want to know what Swale council plans on doing,” she said. “I think the council should be doing more to help us all.”

Emma and her family are now living in temporary housing in Rushenden.

“We are in a three-bed with our dining room being used as a bedroom,” she said. “We’re here for a maximum of two years, so we need to find somewhere more permanent to live.

“We have got nothing back from the council or the house.”

Thinking back to May 29, when Emma and her family were evacuated from their home, Emma said: “That time has flown by really, but in other ways it’s dragged.

“The one thing that got me that day was that we had noticed these cracks in the road and there was one that was going straight up through my pavement at the front.

“When I phoned the council, they said it was nothing to do with them because it was an unmade road.

“I phoned the Environment Agency, they said it was nothing to do with them. He said it was probably because it had been so dry. He gave me a number to call on the Monday - this was the Friday - but obviously by then it was too late.”

She added: “Nobody wanted to know when when I was trying to say something bad looked like it was going to happen.

“Now they want to stop us putting it right?”

A team of residents in and around Surf Crescent had been working to remove debris and consolidate the cliff top in a bid to save their properties from suffering the same fate as Emma’s home.

But last month, Swale council issued the residents with a notice to stop all works.

Emma, her partner and four of her children moved into Cliffhanger in August 2018.

The bungalow had three bedrooms and an annexe, which had another two. It also had a swimming pool.

The 43-year-old, who was living in Surrey at the time, said she was looking for “a fresh start” and Cliffhanger was “the main reason” they chose to move to the Island.

“I signed up to get emails from estate agents for different houses in Kent and a bit further, and one day I got the email through for this house and I was like ‘oh my god, that’s what I want’,” she said.

“The views were absolutely amazing.”

Emma paid £195,000 for the property and was mortgage free.

“That was another reason why we moved. We wanted to be mortgage free,” she said.

On the evening of the first cliff fall, Emma was sitting in her living room with a glass of wine and her 17-year-old daughter, Becky, watching Take That’s lockdown show on Youtube.

“I could hear little cracks and creaking but, living in a timber framed building, you get that anyway. I didn’t think too much of it,” she said.

“Then the blind on the window behind me fell off the wall - it scared the living doo-das out of us.

“My partner came in and looked and said ‘we’ve got to go’, ‘we have got to get out’. The front fence had gone.”

Emma added: “I started running round trying to grab bits and bobs and the kids. I just turned into a headless chicken for a while.

“When we got outside, there were bricks all over the place.

“My daughter phoned 999 and the fire brigade came and made sure everyone was out and evacuated some of the other houses too.”

Emma said the days that followed were “torture”, not knowing if her family home would be saved or not.

“It was quite surreal,” she said. “It’s hard to explain, but if you had a house fire, you’d have the fire and it all goes. But this was dragged out over the whole weekend. It was like torture, waking up each morning thinking has my house gone yet?”

She added: “We lost everything - our home, belongings and memories. The kids didn’t even have their shoes on. Apart from phones and my bank card, everything went.”

When asked how it felt, months on, Emma said: “It’s still upsetting. One of my next door neighbours sent me a video of the night we were evacuated. That made me cry.”

She added: “It is a bit easier now - a bit like a bereavement, a few months down the line.

“The kids still say they want their home back.

“We miss summers in the garden, in the pool. It was just a different way of life, in the middle of nowhere.

"It’s the life I wanted for my kids - walks on the beach after school, coming back muddy and no neighbours right on top of us. I miss that way of life.”

Emma said she and her neighbours, whose properties are now in danger to further erosion, are looking to get “many questions answered” and she has set up a Crowdfunding page to raise £10,000.

She said: “We have sought professional help, but this requires funds. We have put everything we have towards this, cutting costs where we can, but we still need to obtain specialist reports to answer our questions.

“We desperately need help to gain the answers we need, we are so close. This could help secure our future and the future of the remaining properties.”

She added: “At the end of the day, all of these agencies knew there was erosion in the area so why didn’t they stop people from selling the houses or buying them.

“Why are businesses still allowed to market those houses if they are not safe?

“If they had hazard notices on them a few years earlier, this wouldn’t have happened. Something should have been done.”

Watch KMTV's report on how the residents' lives have been turned upside down

To follow the campaign, follow the 'Eastchurch Gap Cliff Fall' Twitter page. To donate, click here.

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