Five members of a family are now homeless and are without any personal belongings after a fire destroyed their home at Postal Street in the Stevedore Housing Scheme of North Ruimveldt in Georgetown on Friday night.
Judy Lynch and her husband, her 29-year-old son Andrew Marks and her daughter-in-law, together with her grandfather, are currently taking refuge at a relative’s home following that blaze.
When this publication visited this family on Saturday, Marks said he was on the road at around 18:00h on Friday when someone told him that his home was on fire. His mother and other family members were at church at the time, so he immediately rushed home, but by then the building was already fully engulfed in flames, and his best efforts to save their belongings proved futile.
“I tried going in the house to see what I could save, but when I opened the door, the place was covered in fire and the heat (was) too much, so I stepped back (out), and I just tried to (put) out the fire,” he detailed.
He said his family had occupied the property for more than 30 years, and everything has been lost – millions of dollars in items – as a result of the fire.
He explained that it has been only a year since they had torn down the old structure and constructed the single-storey, four-bedroom, concrete house that has been destroyed by fire.
“It’s about a year since we built this house. We used to live in a small wooden house, (but) we built over (that) house, bought new appliances and so on. I was supposed to move into my room. I bought (air condition units) for the rooms, and all we had to do was just install them. All of the AC burned up, and everything else we bought to finish off the house burned up,” he disclosed. Asked if the house was insured, Marks replied, “No”.
He said he believes the fire was electrical in origin because the family had recently been experiencing electrical issues as a result of frequent power outages.
“Every time we get blackout, we would have problems with the electricity…it cannot be the stove or anything was lit, because we don’t cook on Saturdays, we keep our Sabbath on that day. Also, the gas bottle is still intact, so it can’t be that,” he said.
Marks has predicted that he would now be experiencing difficult times because he would have to rebuild their home from scratch with no assistance forthcoming from anyone. He said his parents no longer work, and he is the breadwinner of the family.
“I had a shop, and it got break down when they were rebuilding the road. Now I have to go and look for a job to start from scratch. I just have to accept what happened and keep going, and just try to see how we can get back on our feet,” Marks detailed.
An investigation has been launched into the cause of this fire.
