An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

As res­i­dents of Fort Pic­ton, Laven­tille, stood shell-shocked and stared in dis­be­lief as the body of pen­sion­er Ver­na Rigault was re­moved from her gut­ted home yes­ter­day, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for the area, Ka­reem Mar­celle, agreed that the com­mu­ni­ty’s long-stand­ing lack of wa­ter had con­tributed to the tragedy.

While stop­ping short of plac­ing sole blame on the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), Mar­celle said, “We re­al­ly need to do bet­ter as a coun­try. We need to do bet­ter as a cit­i­zen­ry.”

As fire­fight­ers con­tin­ued to douse the re­mains of the house, tears flowed freely among rel­a­tives, neigh­bours and even strangers, as un­der­tak­ers re­moved the body of the 57-year-old from the three-bed­room struc­ture.

Rigault, along with her beloved par­rot and two bud­gies, per­ished in the blaze, which re­port­ed­ly be­gan around 11 am.

A moth­er of six who lives next door said she heard a loud ex­plo­sion on Rigault’s prop­er­ty, which is sep­a­rat­ed from hers by a wall, and smelled smoke. She said she alert­ed her teenage son, grabbed her two-month-old ba­by and rushed to safe­ty, un­aware that Rigault was trapped in­side the burn­ing house.

Even as she con­tact­ed the fire ser­vice, near­by res­i­dents at­tempt­ed to form a buck­et brigade. How­ev­er, their ef­forts were thwart­ed by the lack of wa­ter and they were forced to aban­don at­tempts to save the con­crete struc­ture.
It was on­ly af­ter fire­fight­ers ar­rived and ex­tin­guished the blaze that res­i­dents re­alised Rigault had been trapped in­side and died in the fire. Her body was lat­er found crouched in the bath­room dur­ing a sweep of the premis­es.

The blaze com­plete­ly de­stroyed Rigault’s home, leav­ing eight peo­ple home­less. An ad­join­ing prop­er­ty hous­ing six oc­cu­pants was al­so dam­aged.

Ex­press­ing sad­ness over the loss, Mar­celle con­firmed that the area has long suf­fered from an in­ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply. De­spite be­ing on a week­ly WASA sched­ule, he said the sit­u­a­tion has wors­ened over the past sev­en months.

“It is a very, very sad scene,” Mar­celle said. “The com­mu­ni­ty of Laven­tille is in mourn­ing.”

He re­vealed that he had spo­ken with Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee to arrange tem­po­rary shel­ter for the dis­placed fam­i­lies.

“It is the worst day of their lives,” he said.

Vow­ing to pro­vide con­tin­ued as­sis­tance, Mar­celle added, “They have al­ready ex­pe­ri­enced some­thing that is trag­ic and will change their lives for­ev­er.”

He al­so said he con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Van­dana Mo­hit and the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion to arrange ad­di­tion­al sup­port.
He said food ham­pers had al­ready been or­gan­ised for the af­fect­ed res­i­dents, adding he will al­so reach out to the Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs to as­sist with re­plac­ing im­por­tant doc­u­ments lost in the fire.

Re­turn­ing to the is­sue of wa­ter short­ages—which he de­scribed as the com­mu­ni­ty’s “biggest hur­dle”—Mar­celle said he had raised con­cerns with a se­nior WASA of­fi­cial just hours be­fore the fire.

“I spoke to the di­vi­sion­al head of WASA hours be­fore this sit­u­a­tion hap­pened, again bring­ing to his at­ten­tion the wa­ter chal­lenges res­i­dents have been reach­ing out to me about,” he said.

He not­ed that the com­mu­ni­ty had been with­out wa­ter since Thurs­day, with sup­ply re­turn­ing on­ly briefly yes­ter­day morn­ing.

“It came back for a very short pe­ri­od, less than half an hour, and I be­lieve that if there was in fact wa­ter, a life could have been saved or the dam­age could have been min­imised,” Mar­celle said.

He praised res­i­dents who at­tempt­ed to help, not­ing that sev­er­al had said the fire was not wide­spread when they first ar­rived on the scene.

“They went to neigh­bours and to the house to form a wa­ter brigade, and re­alised there was no wa­ter,” he said.

Mar­celle added that while the area has long been on a wa­ter sched­ule, con­di­tions have de­te­ri­o­rat­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the past five to six months.

“Even when wa­ter comes, the is­sue has been the pump sys­tem. Pre­vi­ous­ly, the pumps en­sured wa­ter reached the hilly ar­eas.

“Now, even when wa­ter is sup­plied, on­ly res­i­dents on the low­er end re­ceive it,” he said.

Res­i­dents, he added, are of­ten forced to wait un­til late at night to col­lect wa­ter or do ba­sic house­hold tasks.

“In 2026, that is un­ac­cept­able,” Mar­celle said. “Wa­ter is life, and in this case, the ab­sence of it re­sult­ed in death.”