KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

A rou­tine morn­ing turned in­to heart­break for sin­gle moth­er An­drea Jo­gie, who watched help­less­ly as her home was en­gulfed in flames, just hours be­fore a car­pen­ter was due to as­sess it for re­pairs.

Jo­gie, 38 and un­em­ployed, had been seek­ing a gov­ern­ment grant to car­ry out much-need­ed ren­o­va­tions on the wood­en house lo­cat­ed off the South­ern Main Road, La Ro­main.

She hoped to make the home live­able again for her­self and her two young sons, aged eight and sev­en.

At the time of the fire, Jo­gie and her chil­dren were stay­ing tem­porar­i­ly at her broth­er’s house, lo­cat­ed just in front of hers. Her sons were at school, and she was about to pre­pare a meal when she no­ticed smoke.

“A lit­tle while af­ter, I start­ed hear­ing a crack­le and saw smoke com­ing through the kitchen win­dow. When I checked, I saw all the smoke com­ing down and from the kitchen, you could see the back of the house. I ran out to the front by the man­go tree and saw the whole house up in flames,” Jo­gie said.

No one had been liv­ing in the house as it was await­ing re­pairs to its floor­ing and a side wall. How­ev­er, it still had elec­tric­i­ty, fur­ni­ture, ap­pli­ances, and cloth­ing. Since the pass­ing of her moth­er a few years ago, Jo­gie had been liv­ing there with her two sons and her vi­su­al­ly im­paired fa­ther, whom she cares for full-time.

The three-bed­room struc­ture al­so con­tained a kitchen, liv­ing room, and din­ing room—now all lost in the fire.

“I ap­plied for a grant to start fix­ing the house and the car­pen­ter was com­ing to­day to give me an es­ti­mate, but it so hap­pened that this came and hap­pened this morn­ing.”

Jo­gie said she did not know what caused the blaze.

How­ev­er, she ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the com­mu­ni­ty for ral­ly­ing around her dur­ing the or­deal.

“Neigh­bours came and got the hose and be­gan wet­ting the fire,” she said, prais­ing the swift re­sponse of fire­fight­ers.

For­tu­nate­ly, her broth­er’s home, where the fam­i­ly had been stay­ing, was not dam­aged.

Al­though no lives were lost, Jo­gie lament­ed the sen­ti­men­tal val­ue of what was de­stroyed.

“No ma­te­r­i­al things, but there are a lot of mem­o­ries in this house. My chil­dren took their first steps, like when I would come for Christ­mas and they were tod­dlers now learn­ing to creep, and then took their first foot­steps in this house.

“My par­ents were mar­ried for close to 50 years be­fore my mum died. She lived right in this same house. My broth­ers and I grew up right here, hap­pi­ly. There are a lot of mem­o­ries.”

She be­lieved her sons would be dev­as­tat­ed up­on re­turn­ing from school, as the home held cher­ished mem­o­ries of time spent with their grand­moth­er.

Jo­gie es­ti­mates loss­es to be around $150,000 and hopes to re­build and re­cov­er what she can. She said any as­sis­tance would be great­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed. The fam­i­ly can be con­tact­ed at 396-4198.