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Friday, July 25, 2025

The Hotel Guiria tragedy

by

20141005

In the late 19th cen­tu­ry, se­vere civ­il un­rest in Venezuela saw an in­flux of thou­sands of Venezue­lans to Trinidad. Now, this was not new, since from at least the 1840s pe­ons known as the "co­coa pa­ny­ols" had sup­plied sea­son­al labour for the boom­ing choco­late in­dus­try; and Venezuela pro­vid­ed at least 70 per cent of all food im­port­ed in­to the is­land in the pe­ri­od 1820-1930, with corn, cat­tle, pigs, plan­tains, leather, tas­so (dried meat), cheese and yams be­ing shipped in great quan­ti­ties to San Fer­nan­do and Port-of-Spain.In­deed, live beef on the hoof was brought to the sandy beach on the Wood­brook fore­shore (which in those days was just south of Ari­api­ta Av­enue) and then herd­ed to mar­ket in a wild stam­pede.

The class of im­mi­grant in the pe­ri­od 1890-1915, how­ev­er, was of a bet­ter breed­ing, be­ing gen­tle­folk who came here with their fine grandee man­ners and cul­tured ways. Not a few of them were Gen­er­alis­si­mos or se­nior mil­i­tary men oust­ed by tur­moil. Some, like the Dra­gos, For­jonels, Pradas and De Li­mas, were able to es­tab­lish pros­per­ous busi­ness­es and put down per­ma­nent roots in the is­land.Oth­ers were mere­ly wait­ing un­til peace re­turned to their home­land so that they could re­coup their loss­es and es­tab­lish them­selves. These itin­er­ants lived in two re­spectable board­ing hous­es: the Ho­tel Mi­ran­da owned by David A Nan­ton and lo­cat­ed on Hen­ry Street, and Ho­tel Guiria owned by Joaquin Pil­dain, a Por­tuguese, lo­cat­ed on the cor­ner of Al­mond Walk (Broad­way) and Ma­rine (In­de­pen­dence) Square. These in­sti­tu­tions pro­vid­ed cramped and of­ten un­com­fort­able quar­ters where en­tire fam­i­lies were some­times squashed in­to one or two rooms. Women and chil­dren in par­tic­u­lar resided in these cir­cum­stances while the men in gen­er­al wan­dered about the city seek­ing out fel­lows in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances and con­gre­gat­ing to drown their sor­rows.

Ho­tel Guiria burns

In 1895, one Sun­day morn­ing at 3:45 am, a fire broke out at the Ho­tel Guiria, al­leged­ly from a lamp in a toi­let. It soon en­gulfed the struc­ture; its stone walls stood firm, but it was filled with com­bustible ma­te­r­i­al such as wood­en walls, roof beams, stairs, etc.Chaos en­sued with vic­tims be­ing trapped, since the main ac­com­mo­da­tions were on the first floor with the ground floor.

Mr Heromi­no Fa­gasin jumped out of a win­dow and died of a bro­ken neck. An­oth­er, Mr Kramer, and sev­er­al la­dy guests died as the roof col­lapsed un­der them while they were on it try­ing to leap to an­oth­er build­ing.Mrs De Osio and her chil­dren al­so leapt to the ground where the young ones sur­vived. She her­self was naked from be­ing burnt, and rolled over the stony ground. Sev­er­al po­lice­men were present and she plead­ed with them to car­ry her to a more com­fort­able rest­ing place, but the kind­ly of­fi­cers of the law ig­nored her. She was aid­ed by the Rev Fr Em­manuel OP, who had run across from the Cathe­dral pres­bytery on Char­lotte Street.

He ad­min­is­tered last rites to Mrs De Osio and she died on the ground.Per­haps the most trag­ic was the case of the wid­owed Mrs Es­chev­e­ria and her chil­dren. Be­ing late alert­ed to the fire, she saw her maid with the two youngest babes per­ish in the flames. The brave woman then threw her oth­er three chil­dren, who were al­ready burnt, in­to the square. Her twin daugh­ters Rose and Au­ro­ra, aged 12, and their sis­ter Clau­dia, were ter­ri­bly in­jured.By this time, am­bu­lance carts as well as oth­er wheeled con­veyances had ar­rived to take the wound­ed to the Colo­nial Hos­pi­tal, al­most two miles away at the top of Char­lotte Street near the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah. One was parked sev­er­al hun­dred feet away from the dy­ing Es­chev­e­ria chil­dren. Rose, still able to walk, but naked, bleed­ing and burnt, begged a po­lice­man stand­ing near­by to car­ry her to the cart, to which he replied–in the best car­ing form of the Trinidad po­lice­man–that she would have to walk since he could not soil his tu­nic by touch­ing her, far less than pick­ing the in­jured girl up.

One has but to pause to see that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Both the young girl and her sib­lings died.In all, the death toll was 50, some be­ing killed out­right in the build­ing and oth­ers dy­ing lat­er in the hos­pi­tal. It was a dark day in­deed for Port-of-Spain.The ho­tel did not re­cov­er from the ter­ri­ble in­ci­dent and it was nev­er re­built. The site to­day is the one oc­cu­pied by KFC on In­de­pen­dence Square.


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