SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

With­in min­utes, a re­lax­ing af­ter­noon turned in­to chaos af­ter a fire rav­aged two homes in Tabaquite, dis­plac­ing five peo­ple, in­clud­ing a prison of­fi­cer and his teenage son.

Prison of­fi­cer Rishi Ram­lal was re­turn­ing home around 1.30 pm on Tues­day when he saw smoke com­ing from the up­per floor of his home at Em­manuel Junc­tion. He alert­ed his rel­a­tives and, with the as­sis­tance of neigh­bours, tried to pre­vent the flames from spread­ing to their homes. His two aunts and his 13-year-old autis­tic son were at home at the time.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day, smoke was still em­a­nat­ing from the ru­ins. Ram­lal’s aunt, Si­ta Sam­my, who lived alone in a two-bed­room house, said she nev­er imag­ined she would lose her home, which be­longed to her par­ents. Ram­lal lived in an­oth­er house, mere feet away on the same com­pound, with his 76-year-old moth­er, 74-year-old aunt, and son.

She re­called that she was sit­ting down­stairs in her home when she smelt some­thing burn­ing. Ini­tial­ly, she thought her neigh­bour was burn­ing some­thing, but she checked her home to make sure.

“I run in the kitchen, noth­ing. I gone up­stairs, noth­ing, not think­ing, is the front (by Rishi). I come down and I gone back again. When I gone back, I on­ly hear pax, pax, pax. My glass in my apart­ment break up and the cur­tain catch so I can’t do noth­ing. All I could do is run out back. I watch in the front, the whole roof is smoke, and it done catch al­ready.”

Sam­my said there wasn’t any­thing she or any­one else could do to save the homes. “Every­thing burn so fast,” she said. She said Ram­lal’s son had just tak­en a bath and went in­to his home to change, and his aunt went to check on him. “They run out,” she re­called.

Sam­my said she was now stay­ing with her niece, but they had lost every­thing they owned. “I can’t study Christ­mas now, every­thing is gone.”

She had no idea what could have caused the fire. Of­fi­cers from the Ch­agua­nas Fire Sta­tion and Bras­so Po­lice Sta­tion re­spond­ed and are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Any­one will­ing to as­sist the fam­i­ly can con­tact 360-6091.