Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Six mem­bers of a Pe­nal fam­i­ly are now home­less af­ter a fire de­stroyed their home on Sun­day night.

While thank­ful that they all es­caped un­harmed, 47-year-old Steve Richards is plead­ing for as­sis­tance to re­build their lives.

Richards’ wife was not at home, as she had left for Guyana on Sat­ur­day night. The cou­ple, how­ev­er, lived with their daugh­ter, his broth­er, sis­ter-in-law, and 69-year-old moth­er at Pe­nal Rock Road. The home com­prised three apart­ments with a to­tal of five bed­rooms. The fire broke out some­time af­ter 10 pm.

A vis­i­bly shak­en Richards re­called that he was asleep when he was sud­den­ly awak­ened by thick smoke.

“The smoke was so thick that it start­ed to burn my nose, and that’s how I re­alised the house was on fire,” he said. He said the thick smoke and in­tense heat made it dif­fi­cult for him to find his way out of the house. “Re­al heat, all the PVC ceil­ing, every­thing just fell down. God guid­ed and pro­tect­ed me to bring me out of there be­cause I re­al­ly could not come out. I scaled the wall and hid my­self a lit­tle bit to run out be­cause the fire was al­ready en­gulf­ing the home. This whole sec­tion was al­ready burnt out.”

Once out­side, Richards im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan shout­ing to alert his rel­a­tives, fear­ing that the noise of the fire was drown­ing out his voice. Sec­onds lat­er, he saw them run­ning out of the house.

“I got re­al con­fused; that thing re­al­ly touched me. I’ve nev­er been so con­fused in my whole life. I am a hum­ble per­son, and this thing hap­pened,” he said.

As the fire raged on, Richards and his fam­i­ly watched help­less­ly, wait­ing for the ar­rival of the fire ser­vice.

“I was so con­fused; I just want­ed to save lives. I didn’t pick up any­thing—no pass­port, noth­ing. I didn’t grab my iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Every­thing was lost in that fire.”

Lament­ing that they would have to start from scratch, Richards ex­pressed grat­i­tude for any as­sis­tance.

“I wish we could get a lit­tle help to re­build be­cause all our lit­tle mon­ey... I still have a lit­tle some­thing left, but all our mon­ey is gone,” he said.

He es­ti­mat­ed his loss­es at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500,000.

Mean­while, Quinam/Morne Di­a­blo coun­cil­lor Sarah Sookdeo, who vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly, con­firmed that the Pe­nal Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion’s Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit had pro­vid­ed them with mat­tress­es and oth­er re­lief sup­plies and that they would be as­sist­ing the fam­i­ly in ac­cess­ing var­i­ous gov­ern­ment grants. Sookdeo al­so plans to seek as­sis­tance from cor­po­rate busi­ness­es on be­half of the fam­i­ly.

Fire of­fi­cers were ex­pect­ed to re­turn to the scene yes­ter­day as they con­tin­ued in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the cause of the fire.