Some 19 peo­ple, in­clud­ing eight chil­dren, are now home­less af­ter fire gut­ted their homes around mid­day in Cal­i­for­nia yes­ter­day.

Six hous­es were burnt to the ground at Con­cerned Cit­i­zens Street, Cal­i­for­nia, af­ter a blaze which was said to have start­ed in one of the hous­es that was aban­doned spread to the oth­er homes.

Nisa Har­ry, who is preg­nant and is due any day now, said she was on her way to the hos­pi­tal when she got word that her home was on fire. Har­ry, who is al­so the moth­er of an autis­tic child, said she lost every­thing, in­clud­ing all the clothes for her ba­by.

Her moth­er Bren­da Ash­ton sat on a chair and wept as Har­ry spoke to the me­dia, with po­lice of­fi­cers try­ing to con­sole her. Ash­ton, who was on her way to do­nate blood for Har­ry, even­tu­al­ly col­lapsed and had to be tak­en away by an am­bu­lance.

An­der­son Ash­ton said the blaze took his en­tire home and made an ap­peal for as­sis­tance.

Ram­c­hand Ra­jbal Maraj, the lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the area on the Cou­va Tabaquite Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, said those af­fect­ed lost every­thing, in­clud­ing toys for their chil­dren and food­stuff for the Christ­mas.

Ra­jbal, who is al­so head of the Cou­va-Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce, made an ap­peal to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to as­sist the strick­en fam­i­lies. He said the dis­as­ter man­age­ment unit of the CT­TRC would pro­vide mat­tress­es and re­lief sup­plies. Staff from the of­fice of the Cou­va South MP were on hand gath­er­ing the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion to send to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment so they too can move quick­ly to as­sist the vic­tims.

CT­TRC chair­man Hen­ry Awong said they will al­so move to make the nec­es­sary link­ages with state agen­cies to get as­sis­tance to bring some lev­el of sta­bil­i­ty to the af­fect­ed res­i­dents.