Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Six chil­dren who were dis­placed af­ter a fire de­stroyed the Mary Care Cen­tre in Wood­brook on Wednes­day are now safe at the St Jude’s Home for Girls in Diego Mar­tin.

The cen­tre’s co­or­di­na­tor, Deb­o­rah De Rosia, said the two tod­dlers and four teenage girls will spend the week­end there as an­oth­er space is be­ing pre­pared.

“We were told that they could on­ly spend a night, but I went in­to St Jude’s yes­ter­day, and they agreed to hold them un­til Sun­day, Mon­day for the lat­est,” De Rosia said dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at Eter­nal Light Com­mu­ni­ty in Ma­coya yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 10.50 pm, of­fi­cers of the Wood­brook Po­lice Sta­tion re­spond­ed to a fire at 43 Gal­lus Street.

Up­on their ar­rival, of­fi­cers ob­served smoke em­a­nat­ing from a flat, cream-coloured, con­crete build­ing; its oc­cu­pants were on the road­way.

Of­fi­cers of the Wright­son Road Fire Sta­tion and oth­er sta­tions ex­tin­guished the blaze. No one was in­jured.

“There was a fire in the kitchen and fire in a bed­room. We don’t know how it start­ed; we are still wait­ing on fire pro­tec­tion to go in and do their checks and let us know what hap­pened,” she said.

De Rosia re­vealed that they spent the last cou­ple of days search­ing for a space and have lo­cat­ed a house in Bel­mont for the girls.

She said they have been work­ing fever­ish­ly to re­pair the house ahead of Mon­day.

“We have been spend­ing all day to­day just try­ing to put things in place; yes­ter­day we went and we vis­it­ed some build­ings that the church has in Her­mitage Road in Bel­mont, and we looked at it and we can do some­thing there, but it’s go­ing to take much longer than Mon­day, so we are go­ing to take them to Archer Street in Bel­mont,” she ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to the pam­phlet, the Mary Care Cen­tre pro­vides a sanc­tu­ary for young preg­nant girls/women from age 12. The home al­so helps the young moth­ers with food and shel­ter for them and their chil­dren as well as a job.

“They are all do­ing well; yes­ter­day they all vis­it­ed a medic. When I spoke with them, they were all do­ing well, and over this week­end we will meet with them again. We have put in place some­one who deals with trau­ma, so as soon as they come back to us, we will have some­one deal with them on a one-on-one ba­sis,” she said.

The two tod­dlers are chil­dren of teens housed at Mary Care Cen­tre, and an­oth­er teen is cur­rent­ly preg­nant.

De Rosia said since they post­ed about the fire, sev­er­al peo­ple have made do­na­tions. She thanked Trinidad and To­ba­go for their kind­ness. Do­na­tions can be made at the Cen­tre for Peace at #2 War­ren Street, Wood­brook.