By WANDEKA GAYLE, Staff ReporterA FIRE OF unknown origin, devoured a house at Cambridge Avenue, Franklyn Town, Kingston yesterday afternoon, leaving seven adults and eight children, including two infants, with only the clothes on their backs, a few pieces of furniture and floral arrangements. No one was injured.
Charmaine Austin, a resident of the tenement dwelling house said to house seven families, told THE STAR that between 3 and 4 p.m., she was awakened by the pungent smell of smoke and ran to the next room to call another tenant. However, tongues of fire raged in the middle of the house, almost barring her path.
"When mi run over to di room is like everything just ketch a fire," Austin, 24, said, holding her head and looking at the shell of the house.
She managed to get the others out of the house but it was too late to save much.
The landlady, 63-year-old Suzan Brown, stated that her husband terminated insurance payments on the house shortly before his death, six years ago.
Tenants stated that they made several futile calls to the Fire Brigade, which they claimed arrived more than half an hour after the fire started.
District Officer of the York Park Fire Station, Robert Trottman, told THE STAR that they were on the scene shortly after the call came at 4:40 p.m. and denied that the truck arrived empty, as some residents alleged.
"We used two units of water and got assistance from a water tanker," Trottman explained. "We made the request at the same time that we arrived, when we saw the content of the smoke."
Several community men assisted fire-fighters by aiming the hose at the entrance of the house, while the firemen doused flames in the rear. While THE STAR was on the scene, small sections of the roof caved in. Firemen battled with the flames until shortly before 6 p.m.
Twenty-four-year-old Debra Fletcher, is grateful that she was on the scene at the time to save her five-year-old daughter, Modi-Ann, and her one-year-old nephew, Deondre, who, she stated, tried to run back into the raging flames.
"If I wasn't here, di two of dem woulda bun to di Earth," she said, putting her head down on a barrel.
Meanwhile, Louise Dawes, 57, who has lived in the house since February, laments the loss of her four barrels of haberdashery. She told THE STAR she was nervous because she did not know where she was going to spend the night.
Cadeja McIntosh, 13, a first form student of Pentab High and Evening Institute on North Street, Kingston, said in all the panicking, she never saved one school book, and her school uniforms are now cinders.
Other tenants who have lived at the residence between three to seven years, could neither estimate nor comprehend their loss.
However, Councillor for the Allman Town Division, Desmond Bailey, was on the scene to reassure tenants and offer sympathy.
"We try to see how we can arrange if family members or friends could give shelter for the time being," he told THE STAR. "Tomorrow (today) we plan to get in touch with the Poor Relief Department, the Ministry of National Security and Welfare and also the Red Cross to see if they can render assistance."
