A single mother and her family are now facing a dark Christmas after her electrical connection was damaged during an early morning fire yesterday that destroyed her neighbour’s house in South Oropouche.
The fire was allegedly set by a 49-year-old mentally challenged man who was residing in the house at Mon Desir Road, Dow Village.
The police found the man hiding in some nearby bushes. He was arrested and is expected to be charged with arson.
Recalling the events leading to the fire, Denise Acevero-Hosein claimed she called the police and the fire service twice on Saturday night seeking their intervention after she realised that the man had been setting fires.
She said around 9.30 pm Saturday, she and her two children, a 16-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl, were at home when her son alerted her to the fire at the man’s house.
Acevero-Hosein’s father and brother live downstairs. She said she ran outside and asked the man what he was doing. She said he threw a burning mattress out the window to the back of the house. With the assistance of her son, they used a hose to extinguish it while her daughter called the police.
When they called the fire service, they asked them if the fire was extinguished and Acevero-Hosein told them it was and they were waiting for the police.
“We sat and waited and sitting in the porch and then after I notice him going in with papers. He came out to the porch, walk around the house with the papers, come back up and then he went around with a sheet in his hand. I called back the station and told them this man looking like he going to do something again, please come. That was a lil while after the first call.
“We called back the fire station and they asked if we seeing any fire. I say no, but like he light plastic inside because you smelling plastic burning. We waited until probably almost 12 o’clock. The police did not show up. They told us they were on a road traffic accident with a drunk driver that they will come, they never came. We went inside and I told my son I going to sleep,” the mother said.
She jokingly told her son he was on guard that night.
“I went to bed and minutes to four this morning I woke up and when I look out I saw the whole place bright. I run out and I tell them time to get out he light back the house. We pick up what we could gather and ran out the house,” she said.
While they were waiting for the fire service, Acevero-Hosein said, her brother climbed to the roof of their house with the hose and was throwing water on it. The fire left her window damaged as well as the electrical wires leading to her house.
“We don’t have electricity. We need to rewire because all the wires were burnt, all the windows burnt.” She said the curtains in her living room were also burnt. “If they (police) would have dealt with it last night all this could have been avoided,” she complained.
With Christmas a week away, the mother was worried whether her electricity would be restored by then since she did not have the money to rewire her house.
She said T&TEC advised her that she would have to source an electrician and submit certain documents. Acevero-Hosein said while she had issues with her neighbour in the past, she said this was the first major incident.
“I am not sure how I will get this sorted out,” she lamented. However, she was grateful that their house was not gutted.
Attempts to get a response from the police regarding the woman’s allegations were unsuccessful.
