The village of Preston in the Parish of St.Mary, Jamaica was an active farming community until May 1986. Slope movements in and around the village following May-June 1986 rainfall caused a widespread development of fissures, slumping and subsidence forcing residents to abandon their homes and farming lands. Today, Preston is a ghost village.

The overall public reaction to this event was perhaps best summed up in an editorial in the leading newspaper of the country, the Daily Gleaner of 18th May 1986, which described it as "St.Mary Mystery" suggesting that there is no readily available explanation for this phenomenon. The causes of this misfortune for the citizens of Preston were landslides, which are a very common geologic hazard on the island. However, Preston is not the only place on the island that is affected by landslides. The Portland rainstorm of January 3-4, 1998, for example, triggered widespread landslides and related flooding in the Rio Grande Valley resulting in losses estimated by NRCA and ODPEM at hundreds of million dollars. In the Grants Level area, a landslide claimed the lives of four persons and left several others seriously injured.

During the investigations on Preston landslide I had an opportunity to interview the 17 affected families and personally observed their suffering. Having lost their homes and farming lands, they had become "environmental refugees" because of a hazardous geologic process, which was amenable to correction and could possibly have been avoided or impact reduced.
This event prompted me to research this subject in detail and it soon became evident that landslides in Jamaica are a force to reckon with and that scientific data to mitigate landslides is not adequate.