Jensen La Vende

Eleven peo­ple, in­clud­ing a 64-year-old grand­moth­er and her three grand­chil­dren, aged be­tween three and four, are now home­less fol­low­ing a mid-af­ter­noon fire yes­ter­day at Rose Hill, East Dry Riv­er, Port-of-Spain.Ac­cord­ing to fire of­fi­cials, just af­ter 2 pm a re­port was made to the Wright­son Road Fire Sta­tion.When of­fi­cers ar­rived, the two storey wood­en and con­crete house was com­plete­ly en­gulfed. Fire of­fi­cials said that the top storey col­lapsed and the house could not to be saved.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian, a short dis­tance from the spot where her home for the past 39 years once stood, Jacque­line Joseph said the fire oc­curred short­ly af­ter she re­turned home from work. Wear­ing her on­ly re­main­ing piece of cloth­ing, a black dress with a flower pat­tern and a pair of blue Adi­das slip­pers, a somber look­ing Joseph said al­though she could not save any world­ly pos­ses­sions she man­aged to save two of her prized, four-year-old twins Keyan­na and Tekara For­tune. The third grand­child was at school.

Joseph re­called that she had just giv­en her grand­chil­dren ice cream and went to her bed­room where she saw smoke to the back of the house and thought that it was the neigh­bour's house was on fire.Joseph said she was about to use her gar­den hose to douse the blaze when she no­ticed fire in the cor­ri­dor and screamed for help.

"I thank God I come out­side be­cause them chil­dren was in the room (an­oth­er bed­room) lis­ten­ing to mu­sic, they didn't even know it had fire so them could have been trapped in the house," Joseph said. Joseph's son, De­von Joseph said that the fam­i­ly lost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $300,000 but was hap­py no lives were lost.He be­lieved that the fire was caused by in­dis­crim­i­nate burn­ing of garbage at the back of the house.

Jacque­line Joseph said she would stay by one of her sons in Diego Mar­tin tonight and was un­cer­tain of where she would next find a logding.The fam­i­ly is seek­ing as­sis­tance from the au­thor­i­ties in re­build­ing their home as they have no in­ten­tion to leave the area.