RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Sift­ing through charred doc­u­ments be­neath the rub­ble of her burned home, Al­li­son Mc­Carthy is now left try­ing to piece her life back to­geth­er af­ter a fire—be­lieved to be ar­son—re­duced her Siparia house to ash­es, leav­ing her, her com­mon-law hus­band and their five chil­dren home­less.

Mc­Carthy and her com­mon-law hus­band, Gre­go­ry Zamore of La Brea Trace, Siparia, said no one was at home when the blaze start­ed around 7.20 pm on Fri­day, but they had re­ceived re­peat­ed death threats in the days lead­ing up to the in­ci­dent.

Mc­Carthy said she had ear­li­er left the house with their chil­dren when she re­ceived a call in­form­ing her that the home was on fire.

“I think it was de­lib­er­ate … peo­ple were threat­en­ing to burn down the house and kill every­body,” she said, link­ing the in­ci­dent to a long-stand­ing land dis­pute.

The cou­ple said ten­sions have per­sist­ed for years, with Zamore claim­ing mul­ti­ple re­ports were made to po­lice about threats.

“Just the day be­fore, there were threats to burn down the house,” he said.

The fire has al­so re­vived painful mem­o­ries for the fam­i­ly. Zamore said his un­cle, Alexan­der Robin­son, a pen­sion­er who pre­vi­ous­ly lived on the prop­er­ty, went miss­ing from the same house in 2004 and was nev­er found. No one was ever held ac­count­able.

The blaze de­stroyed every­thing the fam­i­ly owned, in­clud­ing ap­pli­ances, fur­ni­ture, cloth­ing and im­por­tant le­gal doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to an on­go­ing High Court mat­ter in­volv­ing Zamore, who is un­able to work due to in­juries from a past ac­ci­dent.

Mc­Carthy, who works part-time at a su­per­mar­ket, said the fam­i­ly sur­vives on lim­it­ed in­come, sup­ple­ment­ed by pub­lic as­sis­tance and small-scale fruit sales.

The cou­ple’s five chil­dren, who range in age from three to 12, are now dis­placed and stay­ing at the Quar­ry Vil­lage Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, with no clear plan for per­ma­nent hous­ing.

“We don’t re­al­ly have any­where to go … every­thing we had is gone,” Mc­Carthy said, ap­peal­ing for pub­lic as­sis­tance to re­build.

Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo said ef­forts are un­der­way to as­sist the fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing tem­po­rary shel­ter and ac­cess to so­cial sup­port grants. How­ev­er, he said re­build­ing would de­pend on ver­i­fi­ca­tion of land own­er­ship.

He al­so called for greater po­lice re­spon­sive­ness, not­ing that if pri­or re­ports were made and not act­ed up­on, it may have con­tributed to the sit­u­a­tion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the cause of the fire are on­go­ing.