RALPH BAN­WARIE

Fif­teen mem­bers of the Homer fam­i­ly, whose homes were de­stroyed by fire at Ve­ga De Oropouche on Fri­day, have been tem­porar­i­ly housed at the con­stituen­cy of­fice of Min­is­ter of De­fence and MP for To­co/San­gre Grande, Wayne Sturge.

The fam­i­ly said they are grate­ful to Min­is­ter Sturge for his com­pas­sion and quick ac­tion in open­ing his Fos­ter Road, San­gre Grande, of­fice to ac­com­mo­date them over the week­end and con­tin­u­ing to pro­vide as­sis­tance.

Mar­ket ven­dor Do­minic Homer said the fam­i­ly is still wait­ing to be re­lo­cat­ed.

“As you can see, we are still at the MP’s of­fice wait­ing to be placed in a gov­ern­ment house or a rent­ed lo­ca­tion,” he said. “The chil­dren can­not at­tend school; they are still trau­ma­tised. We are wait­ing on the Fire Ser­vice re­port so we can re­place our doc­u­ments—ID cards, dri­ver’s per­mits and so on—and ap­ply for grants. We just want every­one to un­der­stand our sit­u­a­tion and help in any way pos­si­ble.”

Homer ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion to Sturge, Coun­cil­lor Daryl Mo­han, and Al­der­man An­gard Ar­joon­s­ingh “for stand­ing by us dur­ing this dis­as­ter and con­tin­u­ing to as­sist us vi­brant­ly.”

He said Sturge, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Min­is­ter of Hous­ing David Lee, has been work­ing to find a suit­able home for the dis­placed fam­i­ly, pos­si­bly in The Co­coa or Du­ran­ta Gar­dens area.

Homer made an ap­peal to gov­ern­ment agen­cies: “Please reach out to us and help us get a place to stay in com­fort un­til we can re­build our homes.”

An­oth­er fire vic­tim, Po­lice Con­sta­ble Lar­ry Homer, said the fam­i­ly com­pris­es mem­bers of the Homer Par­ran­deros parang band. They al­so op­er­ate an­oth­er group, Los Car­iños, based in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas.

“All our mu­si­cal in­stru­ments and equip­ment were de­stroyed in the fire,” he said. “We will have to re­build, and most like­ly we will not be able to per­form this Christ­mas.”

Con­sta­ble Homer plead­ed with the au­thor­i­ties not to place them in un­suit­able tem­po­rary hous­ing.

“Please, we have just come out of a tragedy—don’t put us some­where that will be trau­mat­ic. We want to live peace­ful­ly and in an en­vi­ron­ment that is com­fort­able for our chil­dren,” he said.

He added that he was dis­ap­point­ed none of his se­niors had reached out to him fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent.

Homer al­so called on the Min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for Fire Ser­vices to en­sure that at least two fire ten­ders are sta­tioned at the San­gre Grande Fire Sta­tion to pre­vent a sim­i­lar tragedy in the fu­ture.

The fam­i­ly es­ti­mates that the blaze, which oc­curred at the cor­ner of Mela­jo Road and To­co Main Road, caused loss­es close to $1 mil­lion.

Any­one wish­ing to as­sist the Homers can con­tact them at 771-2472, 720-6522, or 710-1650.