As the second week following the Kingston fire rolled around the victims were on Sunday faced with another confrontation involving the new owner of the land, Maurice Sukhoo.
According to Patricia Cornette, at around 10:00 am three fire trucks and one police van visited the place. She said that the officials said they had received a call from Sukhoo, who had told them another fire had started.
Cornette explained that they were cooking under the remains of the house, so maybe it was the smoke from the fireside that the man had seen, which might have prompted him to make the report.
She added also that when the fire officials and the police left, she made a remark to Sukhoo.
As a result she said the man again summoned the police and lodged a complaint about a threat. This led to Cornette and the others having to visit the police station, where they were almost placed on bail, but were subsequently released with the promise to return today.
However, when contacted on the matter Sukhoo told this newspaper that he wasn’t the one who placed the call to the fire service. “… I think…they [the residents] had lit a fire and were boiling something they had picked up, not food and the fire and smoke got big and the guards at IDB called the fire people…they were pretending to cook,” the man said.
He said further that when the officials arrived, they began hurling insults and accusations at him, saying he had called the fire truck. Sukhoo is also saying that the residents are living under insanitary conditions, “they have no toilet and they can be seen early in the mornings emptying their urine all over the yard…in the mornings it smells really bad…this could bring diseases.”
Meanwhile, the occupants still at the site in an attempt to make themselves more comfortable have erected a better makeshift shelter than the last one; this time placing a tarpaulin on the remaining floorboards to the front of the building and adding zinc sheets to secure it.
This they said will help to protect them from the rain. Cornette said that on Wednesday last they visited the Ministry of Housing where they solicited house lots by filling out the necessary form. She said that officials there had promised to call them, but to date they have not yet received any call. Between Sunday and yesterday, she said they have only received a mattress from a public-spirited woman.
Dozens of people left homeless by the fire have since moved to other locations.
