Fire torches dreams as 20 left homeless
Published:Monday | April 25, 2022 | 12:10 AMAsha Wilks/Gleaner Writer
What began as a gesture of goodwill to a neighbour whose house caught fire ended in widespread heartbreak, with 13 homes engulfed in flames in the capital on Friday afternoon.
It was a familiar refrain in west Kingston: Charred food and clothes, and blackened sheets of zinc lay idle on the ground as painful reminders of lost livelihoods and torched memories.
Residents of Victoria Street in Denham Town reported hearing an explosion and seeing one property covered in smoke and fire and rushed to help extinguish the raging flames.
Audrey Chambers was one of the householders who gathered buckets of water.
But the fire, which began two lots down from her concrete home, quickly spread throughout the tenement yards, which mainly consisted of board and zinc dwellings erected in proximity of each other.
As the winds picked up, the flames moved from housetop to housetop, hopscotching through addresses No. 13-14, where more than 20 people, including children, lived.
“We trying to help the people dem to out the fire and clean out dem tings dem and never know it woulda reach us ... ,” Chambers lamented. “[I] couldn’t even get to go in to save a panty.”
Chambers, who still cannot fathom the speed at which the blaze spread, said she had to buy new clothes to get out of the smoke-filled ones she escaped in.
Still stunned by trauma on Sunday, Chambers sat on the sidewalk across from what was once her home, pondering her next move.
Tamara Malcolm, who was gearing up to celebrate her anniversary and birthday, which fell on the same day of the fire, could not summon words to capture the pain of watching her home burn to the ground.
She is now concerned about how her children’s academic future as she was only able to save her national identification card and a passport.
“When I rushed come back ... I panicked because I was just spinning in the house, don’t know what to do,” she explained.
The unemployed mother of three has appealed to the public for help in purchasing school uniforms and related supplies, a stove, and a bed as her family tries to pick up the pieces.
Malcolm, who was moved to tears, is grateful for life, especially since her youngest child, aged six, was rescued by her husband.
Emeleo Ebanks, public relations officer of the Jamaica Fire Brigade, told The Gleaner on Sunday that firefighters responded to the blaze at 12:33 p.m.
Five units from the Half-Way Tree, Rollington Town, York Park, and Trench Town fire stations were deployed. Homes on Regent Street were also affected.
Estimated damage has been put at $22 million.
Concerned resident Trishanna Brown has urged the authorities to act quickly in providing assistance to the now-homeless fire victims. Brown made a special appeal to the charity group Food For the Poor Jamaica on behalf of her neighbours.
“We woulda like fi di people dem get a house because, you know, time really hard and a ghetto we live,” she said.
Brown said she was awakened by noise from the fire victims and other neighbours but she was so frozen in shock that she could not move.
“When mi run out, mi couldn’t even help ... . Mi couldn’t do nothing at all. Mi haffi just stand up a look; mi turn idiot,” she said.