Sascha Wil­son

A 72-year-old woman, her daugh­ter and son-in-law nar­row­ly es­caped a dev­as­tat­ing fire at their San Juan home on Tues­day night, jump­ing from the top win­dow of the two-storey build­ing to avoid be­ing trapped by flames.

The fire, which broke out at the prop­er­ty on the cor­ner of Sad­dle and Con­cord Roads, de­stroyed both the res­i­den­tial and busi­ness premis­es of the prop­er­ty owned by Ve­r­adette Mc Kie.

Mc Kie had resided and op­er­at­ed her busi­ness there for over 35 years.

Her daugh­ter, Raquel Mc Kie-Agard, and son-in-law, Tim­o­thy Ed­wards, were in the up­per por­tion of the build­ing when they felt hot air blow­ing from the air-con­di­tion­ing unit.
Up­on fur­ther in­spec­tion, they dis­cov­ered that the roof and parts of the build­ing were en­gulfed in flames.

In a des­per­ate at­tempt to es­cape, the trio leapt from a bro­ken win­dow on the sec­ond floor.
They sus­tained in­juries from the fall and were rushed to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where they were treat­ed and lat­er dis­charged.

The fire was re­port­ed at 7.40 pm and fire units from the San Juan and Wright­son Road sta­tions, led by Fire sub-of­fi­cer Cum­mings, re­spond­ed to the scene.
They were able to con­tain the blaze and pre­vent it from spread­ing fur­ther.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Mc Kie re­count­ed her ex­pe­ri­ence, say­ing, “I was pack­ing the freez­er when I no­ticed flames en­gulf­ing the back of the up­stairs area. Every­one start­ed shout­ing, ‘Come out, come out!’ so I quick­ly ran out­side. I made my way to the back­yard, though I can’t clear­ly re­call the ex­act path I took. All I know is that I man­aged to es­cape through the base­ment.”

The cause of the fire is still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the au­thor­i­ties.