Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardain.co.tt

An aban­doned house on Rush­worth Street in San Fer­nan­do, fre­quent­ly oc­cu­pied by street dwellers, was de­stroyed by fire yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Fire­fight­ers from the Mon Re­pos Fire Sta­tion man­aged to con­tain the blaze be­fore it could spread fur­ther. How­ev­er, a near­by house and busi­ness sus­tained mi­nor dam­age.

The wood­en struc­ture, es­ti­mat­ed to be near­ly 100 years old, had been ne­glect­ed for years. A neigh­bour said an el­der­ly man once lived there but fell ill and moved out.

She re­called hear­ing an ex­plo­sion around 11 am be­fore notic­ing the house en­gulfed in flames.

“For years, home­less peo­ple were go­ing in there through the back. The front had bur­glarproof­ing, and TTEC had cut off the lights. No­body re­al­ly came there ex­cept to clean it once a year. I don’t know if maybe one of the home­less peo­ple was in­side cook­ing and it caught afire,” the neigh­bour said.

She ad­mit­ted feel­ing some­what re­lieved that the build­ing was gone, as it had be­come a se­cu­ri­ty risk.

“I am kind of glad in a way be­cause we would see peo­ple all hours of the night walk­ing on the street and go­ing in­to the house,” she added.

Les Ef­forts East/Cipero coun­cil­lor, Ryaad Ho­sein, said it was for­tu­nate that no one was in­jured, de­spite two near­by build­ings be­ing scorched.

He not­ed that va­cant prop­er­ties of­ten at­tract street dwellers, cre­at­ing sig­nif­i­cant risks for sur­round­ing res­i­dents.

“This is what we are try­ing to avoid in the City of San Fer­nan­do. We are try­ing to ei­ther de­mol­ish these prop­er­ties or con­tact the own­ers to get them de­mol­ished. That is the on­ly way we can se­cure these places,” Ho­sein ex­plained.

He said a re­cent San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion (SFCC) as­sess­ment iden­ti­fied around 30 aban­doned prop­er­ties in the city. A re­port is now be­ing com­piled to lo­cate prop­er­ty own­ers and de­ter­mine whether the build­ings can be re­fur­bished or should be de­mol­ished.

How­ev­er, he clar­i­fied that the Cor­po­ra­tion can­not de­mol­ish a prop­er­ty with­out first at­tempt­ing to reach its own­er.

“We will write to them and at­tempt to trace their con­tact through the neigh­bours,” Ho­sein said.

He cit­ed a sim­i­lar case on Sut­ton Street, which al­so end­ed in fire af­ter home­less in­di­vid­u­als moved in. Through the as­sess­ment de­part­ment, Ho­sein said ef­forts are on­go­ing to lo­cate the own­ers of aban­doned prop­er­ties.

“Some­times peo­ple mi­grate and ask neigh­bours to watch over their prop­er­ties, but many times street dwellers end up mov­ing in,” he added.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are still work­ing to de­ter­mine the cause of yes­ter­day’s blaze.