A cook shop operator in St Andrew is giving God thanks after yielding to a feeling of foreboding on Monday morning, a few hours before a magnitude 5.6 earthquake jolted the country and sent a massive boulder plunging into his shop at Two Pass, Constitution Road in St Andrew East Rural.

The man, who opted not to be named, said he was about to open the shop when he decided against doing so.

“Is like Father God said ‘don’t come and open the shop’. I said alright, I will open tomorrow,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

“I was up at the bar,” he said, pointing, “and somebody came and told me that a big stone roll down into my shop. When I came and looked, everything mash up. I even have a six-burner stove around the other side… that mash up… liquor, juice, fridge, everything mash up. I lost everything,” he said.

The man, who said the shop was the only source of livelihood for him and his two sons — one 16 years old the and other nine months old — told the Observer that after he saw the damage he cried. However, he said he was thankful that God spared his life as he would have been in the very spot inside the shop where the boulder landed.

“I would have been dead, dead, because if I was there I would not have been able to escape. Anyway, mi give thanks fi life,” he said.