Fire destroys two homes

A kerosene lamp which was left lighting when a 13-year-old schoolboy fell asleep while doing his school work caused a fire that destroyed two homes in Fyzabad yesterday, police said.

Six people have been rendered homeless as fire swept through their two wooden homes at Chatoor Avenue in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Among the victims were 13-year-old Andre Edmond, his siblings, Jewel, four, and Krystelle, six, and mother, Wilma, as well as next door neighbours, Zachery Harford, 60, and Sherie Ramkissoon, 18. Harford returned from his brother’s funeral yesterday to find his house completely gutted. “Is from one trouble to the next”, Harford sighed. The two families have been given temporary lodging at the homes of sympathetic neighbours.

Wilma described her son, a Form One pupil of Fyzabad Intermediate School, Andre as persistent when coming to his home work, and would often “burn the midnight oil” studying. “We don’t have electricity, and he is accustomed to doing his work in the night by lamp”, she said. When the fire started around 3 am villagers pulled out their buckets and water hoses and attempted in vain to extinguish the blaze.

Wilma, who is a part-time URP worker, said she was asleep with Jewel when fire broke out in another bedroom in which Andre was sitting at the counter of a chest of drawers working on a school project. “He was cutting out clippings from the newspaper, when I think he fell asleep on the dressing table and I think the lamp knocked over”, the mother of nine said. Within moments, according to Wilma, the fire spread quickly through the two bedroom structure.

Ramkissoon said he was listening to the radio when he heard the commotion. “I get up to get the water hose and I started to wet my house because the flames was already on the wall. The water pressure was good, but too much for how fast the fire was going through,” Ramkissoon recalled. Within ten minutes, the blaze engulfed the two homes, and there was little the families and villagers could do except look on helplessly. Siparia Fire Service arrived one hour later and completely extinguished the fire.