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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Pensioner thanks God for keeping family safe

by

20110918

A Williamsville fam­i­ly was ren­dered home­less af­ter a mys­te­ri­ous fire de­stroyed the fam­i­ly's home on Sat­ur­day. Wil­fred Hall, 76, broke down in tears yes­ter­day as he de­scribed how he es­caped and watched help­less­ly as his Williamsville home, in which sev­en peo­ple lived in­clud­ing two chil­dren, went up in flames. The pen­sion­er of Morne Roche, vis­i­bly shak­en by his near-death ex­pe­ri­ence, praised God for keep­ing his fam­i­ly safe. Four gen­er­a­tions of the Hall's fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing his great-grand­son Aaron Alexan­der, 3, resided in the five-bed­room con­crete and wood­en house. "Yes, I lucky to be alive. Thank God for that," the el­der­ly man said as he watched lit­tle Aaron try to help move burnt rub­ble.

Hall's grand­daugh­ter, Sta­cy Alexan­der, 28, said coun­cil­lor Suresh Pooran Ma­haraj vis­it­ed the site yes­ter­day and promised to as­sist with re­build­ing. The foun­da­tion, she said, was saved so they could start re­con­struc­tion soon. She said hard­wares in the Gas­par­il­lo area al­so con­tact­ed her and pledged to do­nate ma­te­ri­als to as­sist with re­con­struct­ing the home. She said while the fam­i­ly was still as­sess­ing loss­es she es­ti­mat­ed $75,000 worth of items in­clud­ing weld­ing tools, elec­tri­cal equip­ment, house­hold ap­pli­ances, cash and per­son­al be­long­ings were lost in the fire. Fire pre­ven­tion in­ves­ti­ga­tors, she said, were yet to vis­it the scene to as­sess the cause of the blaze.

Neigh­bours, she said, heard loud ex­plo­sions be­fore the house burst in­to flames. Hall ex­plained that around 8.30 pm on Sat­ur­day he was alone at home when he was awak­ened by a strange noise. "I was ly­ing down when I hear the click, click, click and I pitch up. I want­ed to know what it is. I call­ing the oth­er two grand­boys but, they al­ready left to go to a thanks­giv­ing that they fa­ther went to. I came out and was smelling smoke and when I went around the build­ing that was the same time the roof was com­ing in. I called to the neigh­bour and he came across and said 'Wal­ly we cyah do noth­ing' ," Hall said. Hall said he fell while try­ing to es­cape the flames and his neigh­bour pulled him to safe­ty.

The el­der­ly man said dur­ing the week he was get­ting "a bad feel­ing" but, he be­lieved that it was re­lat­ed to his son who re­cent­ly bought a car. "I get signs dur­ing the week but I could not say what it was. If some­thing is to hap­pen to you and you is a pray­ing soul you does know but I couldn't say what it was. I just had a feel­ing come over me dur­ing the week but every­thing was safe," he lament­ed. Alexan­der said fire of­fi­cers on the scene could not stop the blaze since her un­cle's gas cylin­ders, used for weld­ing, were ex­plod­ing. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing. Any­one in­ter­est­ed in as­sist­ing the fam­i­ly can con­tact Alexan­der at 292-2135.


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