Khara Per­sad

Af­ter los­ing their Diego Mar­tin home and be­long­ings to a sus­pect­ed elec­tri­cal fire on De­cem­ber 19, the Wal­ters and Turn­er fam­i­ly is still look­ing for a new home.Christy Wal­ters, 25, who lived in the up­stairs apart­ment with her broth­er and a room­mate, told the T&T Guardian over the week­end that while calls from the pub­lic of­fer­ing as­sis­tance were ini­tial­ly over­whelm­ing, they had now stopped com­plete­ly."I ex­pect­ed that, but we still have nowhere to live," she Wal­ter said.

On the first night af­ter the fire de­stroyed the six-bed­room home the five fam­i­ly mem­bers had rent­ed for about 14 years, Wal­ters said they were forced to split up. Her moth­er, Mar­i­lyn, who works at West Bend Sales, slept on a bor­rowed mat­tress on the floor of the com­pa­ny's stor­age room."A friend lent her a mat­tress," Christy Wal­ters said.Mar­i­lyn, her moth­er Mary Turn­er, 83, and broth­er Lennard Turn­er Jr, 56, lived in the apart­ment down­stairs.

The fire start­ed around 10 am in Mary's bed­room, and en­gulfed the house with­in ten min­utes. None of the oc­cu­pants were in­jured.Since then, the fam­i­ly has been bunk­ing at the homes of friends and one oth­er fam­i­ly mem­ber. A friend of Christy's, who is cur­rent­ly abroad, of­fered his home un­til his re­turn."We have one week left to stay there. Af­ter that, I re­al­ly don't know where we will go. We're look­ing," said Wal­ters, a sec­ond-year crim­i­nol­o­gy and psy­chol­o­gy un­der­grad­u­ate at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

Wal­ters re­vealed that on the day she lost her home, she al­so re­ceived some good news from the UWI cam­pus in Ja­maica."On the same day of the fire, at around six, UWI called and said I won the schol­ar­ship I ap­plied for months ago. They will cov­er main­te­nance costs for the rest of my de­gree," she said in­cred­u­lous­ly, de­scrib­ing the day as a roller coast­er of emo­tions.

She said with this help, ac­com­mo­da­tion costs for a stu­dent apart­ment at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus would be cov­ered, of­fer­ing some re­lief to the dis­placed fam­i­ly.She is, how­ev­er, ap­peal­ing to any­one who has an af­ford­able three- to four-bed­room apart­ment to reach out to her.

The fam­i­ly's ini­tial rent for the first few months will be cov­ered by Re­Think, an agency which spe­cialis­es in pro­mot­ing acts of kind­ness and pay­ing it for­ward. A spokesman for the group re­spond­ed to the ini­tial sto­ry pub­lished in the T&T Guardian and of­fered to pay the fam­i­ly's rent un­til they got back on their feet."They sim­ply have to iden­ti­fy a place they would like to stay, we will help with trans­porta­tion and mov­ing, and cov­er the cost in the be­gin­ning," he said when con­tact­ed to ver­i­fy the group's com­mit­ment.

He said pay­ing the first cou­ple of months for the fam­i­ly would give them a chance to fo­cus on oth­er needs."It's to help give them an ease be­tween now and when they can catch them­selves again. This is a dire time for them."Oth­er needs in­clud­ed fur­nish­ing the apart­ment, Christy said."We're not look­ing for any lux­u­ries, we just want to get sit­u­at­ed and set­tled, then we can fo­cus on bed­ding, fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances."

A home is al­so need­ed for the fam­i­ly's sev­en dogs who sur­vived the fire. The dogs are be­ing kept tem­porar­i­ly at the T&T So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA) in St James.Christy hopes oth­er dog-lovers would con­sid­er giv­ing the pets a new home. They range from ages three to 14. Space is run­ning low, and the dogs must be adopt­ed soon, ac­cord­ing to per­son­nel from the TTSP­CA."It's hard for my mom and grand­moth­er to see them there. We can't give them a home, but we hope some­one else can adopt them."