And while the flooding and its multiple disasters have occupied everyone’s attention, a family is going through its own personal disaster tonight after their home burnt down this morning. Jacqueline Godwin found out that it could have been an entire neighbourhood.
Jacqueline Godwin Reporting,
The fire destroyed everything the Moody and Neal families owned as flames quickly spread throughout the two storey bedroom house situated in price alley just off Victoria Street. It took the National Fire Service only three minutes to respond to the call but there was nothing fire fighters could do to save the building.
Marie Neal who did not wish to appear on camera was home at the time when fire broke out in one of the rooms on the first floor of the building.
Marie Neal, Fire Victim
“Yes I was home at the time. I live downstairs and apparently the lady who lives upstairs Miss Moody was at work and she left two of her older kids home and her little baby and I don’t know what the young boy was doing but he was downstairs fixing a bike and he went and I was in the house and it didn’t matter how they were hollering for me and I couldn’t hear nor I didn’t smell the smoke. It wasn’t until someone was hollering and the young lady at the back, my sister in law hollered that there was a fire and then I grabbed my niece who I was watching and ran out of the house. This time I had to holler for my daughter because she was asleep.
When I hollered for her then she ran upstairs and when she pushed the door it was because the fire had already blazed up in the house and all she could do was grab out the three or four year old little boy from upstairs because the fire was already blazed up in the house and he was just standing up in there. She grabbed him and ran out with him and I didn’t even run back in because the house is already old too and I didn’t save nothing, I didn’t take out anything. The only thing I took out was those two sofa piece and my TV and everything else wet up or must have gotten destroyed.”
Edmond Moody, Fire Victim
“I don’t know where the girl was because there was a boy and a girl but I don’t know where they were and a small kid. I found the small
kid, he was across the street with the neighbour but the bigger boy I can’t find him and only the girl I saw but otherwise everything was totally destroyed.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
Any idea how this thing started?
Marie Neal,
“I don’t really know but it looks like it was out of the back room because they didn’t have gas upstairs right now so it looks like it was in the room it started but when she found out it had already blazed up and already in the hall, it had already engulfed and thing and my neighbour ran across and that is how the man tried to dash water and thing and from then it just got worse.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
Any idea where this thing started?
Ted Smith, Acting Fire Chief
“No, no. No information, just that one or two children may have been at home at the time; one of them between sixteen and seventeen.”
Because the fire occurred in a congested neighbourhood acting Fire Chief Ted Smith says the damage could have easily been a disaster.
Ted Smith,
“At 11:42 the first truck arrived at the ground. We have a radio communication system and we have a diarist who logs every conversation going on the radio and reporting and everything. So the entry is showing that at 11:42 the first truck arrived on the ground. The truck arrived and found this two storey wooden structure engulfed in flames, the upper section. Three trucks arrived on the ground, just one behind the other and went into operation. The department implemented tactics, strategy on the ground and the fire was contained and extinguished before it could consume the block. If you look around and see the close proximity of the other structures, the age of this structure, the condition, and then you could see clearly if it wasn’t quickly contained it would have spread through the block very easily.”
A total of eleven persons have been left homeless. It is believe for the moment the fire victims are staying with relatives.
