Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A 64-year-old man was in­jured, and a fam­i­ly of three was tem­porar­i­ly dis­placed af­ter a fire par­tial­ly gut­ted their home in Princes Town yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The in­jured man, who is vis­it­ing from abroad, sus­tained burns to his leg and head while es­cap­ing the burn­ing build­ing some­time be­fore 8 am.

He ar­rived in the coun­try a week ago and was stay­ing on the up­per floor of his rel­a­tives’ two-storey house. His niece, Kim Ramkissoon, 33, who lives down­stairs with her fam­i­ly, said she was in the bath­room when she heard bang­ing on the door and some­one shout­ing fire.

Her hus­band was not at home, and her eight-year-old daugh­ter was asleep.

She said, “I just see the house ablaze up­stairs. It start­ed from the gallery to the area to the front of the house, ris­ing and go­ing up to the roof. I just see the roof burn­ing. (I was think­ing) just to pick up my child and get us to safe­ty be­cause she was asleep on the bed.”

While grate­ful that the fire ser­vice ex­tin­guished the blaze be­fore the flames spread to her apart­ment, she said her home was wa­ter-soaked and was un­sure whether she suf­fered any loss­es. She said neigh­bours at­tempt­ed to con­tain the blaze us­ing gar­den hoses but were chal­lenged by a lim­it­ed wa­ter sup­ply.

Para­medics took her un­cle to the hos­pi­tal for fur­ther treat­ment. He was ex­pect­ed to leave the coun­try to­day.

Mean­while, Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine, who vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly, as­sured them that the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit would be as­sist­ing them.

How­ev­er, he lament­ed that since the clo­sure of the Princes Town Fire Sta­tion, sev­en homes in the re­gion had been lost to fires, in­clud­ing in the Buen In­ten­to com­mu­ni­ty a few days ago.

“If this fire sta­tion was in op­er­a­tion, we would have been able to save these hous­es. It is un­for­tu­nate that in this fire, some­one was burned and in the hos­pi­tal. One of the hous­es that was de­stroyed is owned by a fire­man work­ing in the fire ser­vice in New Grant. We are hop­ing that some­thing can be done.”

He was, how­ev­er, con­fi­dent that MP Aiy­na Ali would vis­it the fam­i­ly and make the nec­es­sary rep­re­sen­ta­tions to have the fire sta­tion re­opened.

Any­one will­ing to as­sist the fam­i­ly can con­tact 792-8170.