Twenty seven persons, including children, lost their homes in a fire that destroyed at least eight shacks occupied in the Rosemary Lane, Georgetown settlement known as ‘Tiger Bay’ on Tuesday night, and President Donald Ramotar yesterday visited the area to offer support to the victims.
Firefighters, through their prompt response, saved more than half of the shacks in the squatter settlement, which is located behind the Courts Furniture Store on Main Street, and they also managed to protect the rear of the store from the threatening flames.
Based on counts by residents, at least eight shacks had been reduced to rubble in that section of the area, where close to 100 persons reside.
President Ramotar, who was accompanied by Transport Minister Robeson Benn, visited the area yesterday morning. As he spoke with the victims, their names were being recorded and they later told this newspaper that this was being done so that they could receive assistance which would see them owning their own homes at more suitable locations. There had been previous attempts to relocate the residents from the area, which is a key commercial district.
The fire started sometime after 8 pm. Fire Chief Marlon Gentle told Stabroek News that after receiving the report of the fire, four units responded and managed to extinguish the blaze before it got out of control.
According to Gentle, investigators were yesterday still trying to determine the origin of the fire, but close attention was being placed on the illegal electrical connections where the shacks are located as well as on a report that a woman left two small children alone in a shack where it is being suggested that the fire started.
Gentle said people started setting up a “shanty town” in the burnt out area after a fire in the latter half of the 1990s.
Solidarity
To access the destroyed section, one had to walk through a narrow passageway which was muddied and filled with water. Boards were placed on the ground to make the journey less messy.
All that remained in the section closest to the back of the Courts building was a heap of blackened zinc sheets and burnt wood. Burnt living room chairs and stoves were among some of the items visible in the rubble. Even a full grown papaya tree was burnt by the blaze.
President Ramotar was taken to view the rubble. During his meeting with residents, they told him that they had nowhere to go and some said that they were desperately in need of land. Some said they had land but needed help to build, since they were faced with financial constraints. One woman told the president that she had nothing to eat and that she needed money. The president, however, said he was unable to give her anything since he doesn’t walk around with money.
Later, Ramotar told reporters that it was unfair to ask what assistance government was planning to give to the fire victims. “That is a very unfair question. This thing has just happened. We have to send in the various ministries and to see how fast we can give some relief,” he said in response to the question, which was asked by Stabroek News. He said that he was on the ground to assess the situation and to give solidarity to the victims. “For me to make any commitments now you are putting me in an unfair position,” he said.
Nowhere to go
Some of the residents told Stabroek News that they had to contemplate staying with relatives while some said that they had nowhere to go. Rommel Myles, who has been living in the area for most of his life, said that he had to sleep on the pave on Tuesday night as he had nowhere to go. He said that he was assisted with a mattress.
Myles recalled that he was “in bed” when the fire started. He said that he ran out of his home and later returned for his driver’s licence, which is all he managed to save.
The man said that “his neighbour” was hollering because she had left two of her children alone in one of the shacks to get something to eat and on her way back she spotted the fire. The children, he said, escaped unhurt.
Felicia Accra, the mother of the two children, who are five and three years, said that she left them alone and went across the road to have a bath. She said that she was preparing to have the bath when she heard about the fire. The children, she said, ran out of the shack. She will be staying at relatives living in the area for now.
Meanwhile Ougar Bobb said that she and most of her immediate relatives lived where the fire occurred. At the time, she said, she was not at home but she received information that there was “a huge fire at the back of the yard.” When she arrived home, persons were busily trying to remove their valuables from the shacks.
She said that the firefighters focused on the Courts building as the blaze spread among the shacks and she did not feel this was right. “They should have been concentrating on poor people building,” she added.
Bobb explained that she and her relatives are still residents of ‘Tiger Bay’ because they cannot afford to build their own homes. She said about ten years ago, they received land at Grove, East Bank Demerara. “I done pay for meh land but I can’t build,” she explained, while adding that she would be satisfied if the president can give some sort of assistance to them. “They in the office (Ministry of Housing) feel that we ain’t want to move but is not that. We just can’t afford it (to build),” Bobb stated.
Another resident, Ingrid Paul, told Stabroek News that she had land at Diamond, East Bank Demerara and like many others she does not have the money to construct her home. She said that when she visited her land, other persons were building on it.
The woman said that she has five children and does not want them to grow up in Tiger Bay. “I don’t want them to live in this,” she stressed.
