Ralph Ban­warie

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

An ear­ly morn­ing fire along Ve­ga De Oropouche, To­co Main Road, has left three fam­i­lies—15 peo­ple in to­tal—home­less, with loss­es es­ti­mat­ed at close to $1 mil­lion.

The blaze, which be­gan around 3.30 am yes­ter­day, re­port­ed­ly be­gan at a mi­ni-mart owned by one of the three Homer broth­ers and quick­ly spread to the ad­ja­cent hous­es. With­in min­utes, the flames en­gulfed all three build­ings, burn­ing every­thing to the ground and leav­ing the fam­i­lies with on­ly the clothes they were wear­ing. Two ve­hi­cles, a dog, and a pet bullfinch val­ued at $10,000 were al­so de­stroyed.

Lar­ry Homer, a po­lice of­fi­cer as­signed to the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion, said he and his fam­i­ly were jolt­ed awake by car horns and peo­ple shout­ing “Fire!”

“When I came out, I saw fire in the mi­ni-mart and smoke in my house. All I could have done was grab my wife and chil­dren, my car keys, and run out­side for safe­ty,” he said.

Homer claimed he was shocked that no fire en­gine from the San­gre Grande Fire Sta­tion re­spond­ed. He drove to the sta­tion on Ojoe Road, on­ly to find the gates locked.

“I made sev­er­al calls, no one an­swered. I start­ed blow­ing my car horn, and even­tu­al­ly, one per­son came out. I told him there’s a fire at Ve­ga De Oropouche and no one is re­spond­ing. He said, ‘We com­ing now,’ but no one was in uni­form or get­ting ready to leave,” Homer claimed.

He added that a unit from the Ari­ma Fire Sta­tion ar­rived an hour lat­er, but by then the fire had al­ready de­stroyed every­thing. “They were on­ly able to put out what was still burn­ing,” he said. “I was very dis­ap­point­ed, but that’s the re­al­i­ty.”

An­oth­er vic­tim, Do­minic Homer, a self-em­ployed mar­ket ven­dor and one of the three broth­ers who lost their homes, said the fire spread too quick­ly to be con­tained.

Do­minic es­ti­mat­ed his loss­es at about $300,000.

His son, Dante Homer, who was sup­posed to com­pete in the Come­back Bad­minton Com­pe­ti­tion to­day, lost all his gear in the fire. Dante, who re­cent­ly won two gold medals and one sil­ver at the re­gion­al tour­na­ment in Bar­ba­dos, re­mains trau­ma­tised.

Their sis­ter, Nicole Bartholomew-Homer, de­scribed the ex­pe­ri­ence as heart­break­ing.

“This tragedy is like watch­ing your whole life per­ish be­fore your eyes,” she said. She is ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic, busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, and gov­ern­ment agen­cies to as­sist the fam­i­ly fi­nan­cial­ly, or with build­ing ma­te­ri­als. She can be con­tact­ed at 771-2472.

For now, the fam­i­lies are stay­ing with rel­a­tives, but Nicole said they need help ur­gent­ly to re­build their homes.

“All the chil­dren are trau­ma­tised and in shock. They still can’t come to terms with see­ing their house on fire,” she said.

The fam­i­ly ex­pressed grat­i­tude to their coun­cil­lor, Daryl Mo­han, and the San­gre Grande Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit for pro­vid­ing mat­tress­es, wa­ter, and ham­pers.

Mo­han said it was un­for­tu­nate that the fam­i­lies suf­fered such dev­as­ta­tion so close to Christ­mas.

“I’ll do every­thing I can to get them tem­po­rary hous­ing, grants, and sup­port to re­build,” he said.

The cause of the fire is yet to be 0de­ter­mined.

A T&TEC crew was on the site yes­ter­day, dis­con­nect­ing pow­er lines from the burnt struc­tures, while Flow tech­ni­cians worked to re­store ser­vice to af­fect­ed cus­tomers. One tech­ni­cian claimed the out­age im­pact­ed sub­scribers as far as To­ba­go.