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Monday, February 3, 2025

Elderly man dies in house fire

by

10 days ago
20250124

De­spite a valiant at­tempt by rel­a­tives and neigh­bours to save 79-year-old Hol­lis­ter Hamil­ton yes­ter­day morn­ing, he still met a trag­ic end, per­ish­ing in a fire that en­gulfed his home in Gas­par­il­lo yes­ter­day.

Hamil­ton’s 53-year-old com­mon-law wife, Di­ana Fran­cois, was in­jured as she tried to help the bedrid­den man out of the burn­ing house. She suf­fered third-de­gree burns and was treat­ed at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Four oth­er peo­ple, in­clud­ing two chil­dren, are now home­less.

At the time of the fire, the cou­ple and Fran­cois’ daugh­ter were at home.

Rel­a­tives were too dis­traught to speak with Guardian Me­dia, but neigh­bours said the com­mu­ni­ty was shak­en and sad­dened by the tragedy.

Neigh­bour Abi­o­la Bram­ble-Stephen re­called see­ing one of the vic­tims try­ing to use a gar­den hose in an at­tempt to ex­tin­guish the fire and she, her son and oth­er neigh­bours tried to help, but the heat was too in­tense. She said they used the hose and buck­ets of wa­ter, but “it was al­ready too far gone.”

The fire ser­vices re­spond­ed af­ter they were con­tact­ed around 7.25 am.

Bram­ble-Stephen said Fran­cois suf­fered burns to her arms, chest and neck try­ing to get Hamil­ton out of the house.

She said even­tu­al­ly Fran­cois came out of the front door cry­ing, and they helped her out of the yard.

“When I was try­ing to get in­side, we were hear­ing him cry­ing out.

He was cry­ing out for some­body, and she was scream­ing at him to try to move, but he can’t re­al­ly move. We couldn’t re­al­ly do any­thing but just watch as a house burned down.”

Bram­ble-Stephen, a for­mer emer­gency med­ical dis­patch­er, said the fire brought back hor­ri­ble mem­o­ries of when sev­er­al of her rel­a­tives per­ished in a house fire at Caratal Road in Gas­par­il­lo three years ago.

“It was just a lot to take on and for all the med­ical train­ing that I have, it was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, what to re­al­ly do.’” She said the fire ser­vices ar­rived with­in ten min­utes, but there was not much they could do to save the house or the el­der­ly man.

An­oth­er neigh­bour, Richard Ram­lakhan, praised the fire ser­vice for their quick re­sponse and pro­fes­sion­al­ism.

He said, “The fire ser­vice did a good job; they did a great job be­cause they saved the neigh­bour’s house. They did a great job, as­sist­ed in ap­proach­ing the neigh­bours, talk­ing with the neigh­bours, ask­ing if they need­ed any as­sis­tance. They were pro­fes­sion­al.”

Pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions by fire of­fi­cials sug­gest­ed that the fire may have been ac­ci­den­tal and start­ed in one of the bed­rooms, but in­ves­ti­ga­tions are still on­go­ing. 


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