Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Two fam­i­lies are home­less af­ter a fire de­stroyed their home and every­thing they owned.

The prop­er­ty own­er lived up­stairs the home at Al­ma Street, off Lums­den Street, Gas­par­il­lo, with her nine-year-old daugh­ter and her daugh­ter’s grand­moth­er. Ten­ants Ster­ling McEachrane, 44, and his com­mon-law-wife Kem­ba Lewis, 31, had been rent­ing the down­stairs apart­ment for two years.

Van­da Cross, 60, said she was asleep when the fire start­ed in the kitchen.

“I was sleep­ing, and my grand­daugh­ter wake me up, and I run out­side try­ing to out the fire,” she said.

Cross said she ran down­stairs, knocked on the door to the down­stairs apart­ment to alert the ten­ants. She broke down in tears, as she said they lost all their be­long­ings.

The ten­ants al­so lost their on­ly source of in­come as Lewis ran a small hair­dress­ing busi­ness at the apart­ment. Her hus­band, a con­struc­tion work­er, is un­em­ployed as he broke his leg in April and is still re­cov­er­ing.

Lewis said she and her hus­band were ly­ing on their bed around 10.30 am when they heard a bang­ing on the door. She said when they went out­side, the up­per floor of the house was al­ready en­gulfed in fire and there was noth­ing much they could do as the blaze was too in­tense.

“The up­stairs is a board struc­ture so it burn in sec­onds. We did not have time to pick up any­thing, save any­thing. We just had to come out by the road,” she said.

The cou­ple’s two pet par­rots, Fat Girl and Mok­ie, per­ished in the fire.

With Christ­mas ap­proach­ing, the cou­ple’s wish is to get some­where to live as they can­not af­ford to buy a house or pay a de­posit or rent for an apart­ment at this time.

“It hard, it re­al­ly hard, but I still try­ing to keep fo­cus that every­body still came out with their life, so at least we still have life to start back,” she said.

McEachrane hopes to re­ceive the fire re­port soon and has been speak­ing with the au­thor­i­ties about get­ting a place to stay. While a friend has giv­en the cou­ple tem­po­rary ac­com­mo­da­tions, he said more than any­thing else they need a home.

“Right now I am stay­ing by a friend and that kind of un­com­fort­able. They don’t have room, they just as­sist­ing me,” he said.

Of­fi­cers from the Fire Pre­ven­tion Unit of the T&T Fire Ser­vices are still try­ing to de­ter­mine the cause of the blaze.