Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Ma­yaro pen­sion­ers Lesie and Caran Ali dis­cov­ered their home on fire af­ter vis­it­ing a heart spe­cial­ist in Port-of-Spain on Thurs­day. Their son Daren said his par­ents and broth­er Hafeez lost all their be­long­ings. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Daren said the house, lo­cat­ed on Church Road Junc­tion in Ma­yaro, was de­stroyed be­cause of an elec­tri­cal prob­lem on a pole be­long­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC). "Eye­wit­ness­es said they saw sparks from a T&TEC pole go­ing to the line con­nect­ing to the house," he said.

Since there is no fire sta­tion in Ma­yaro, it took close to an hour for of­fi­cers of the Rio Claro Fire Sta­tion to ar­rive on the scene, he said. He added the dis­tance from Rio Claro to Ma­yaro was about 14 miles. "When they ar­rived, they start­ed with a lit­tle bit of wa­ter...It was about five min­utes wa­ter time and af­ter that they pro­ceed­ed to the Guayagua­yare Road to the oth­er sta­tion," he said.

Daren said he timed the of­fi­cers and it took 48 min­utes for them to re­turn with more wa­ter but by that time the house was burnt and "noth­ing was saved."

Lesie, 67, and Caran, 65, spent the night at rel­a­tives. The in­ci­dent oc­curred around 7 pm, Daren said. Caran, how­ev­er, had to be rushed to the Ma­yaro Health Fa­cil­i­ty be­cause she faint­ed when she saw the dis­as­ter. "We would wel­come any as­sis­tance by any­one at this time," Daren said. Any­one wish­ing to help the cou­ple can con­tact 349-7742. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, an of­fi­cer at the Rio Claro Fire Sta­tion said he was not al­lowed to pro­vide any in­for­ma­tion.