Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

When fire broke out at his fam­i­ly’s Rousil­lac home on Mon­day morn­ing, 22-year-old Keron Nehru ran back in­side in a des­per­ate at­tempt to save the house.

As he dis­ap­peared in­to the smoke and flames, his 11-year-old broth­er could be heard scream­ing, “Broth­er, broth­er,” in a 26-sec­ond cell­phone video of the in­ci­dent.

Nehru even­tu­al­ly made it out with mi­nor burns, while his moth­er, broth­er and fa­ther were al­so un­harmed.

The broth­ers were down­stairs with their moth­er, Sarah, when the fire start­ed around 10:15 a.m. Their fa­ther was not at home at the time.

The fam­i­ly op­er­ates three busi­ness­es—a glass busi­ness, a bar­ber sa­lon and a min­i­mart and veg­etable stall—from the ground floor of the house.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Nehru said a neigh­bour alert­ed him that smoke was com­ing from the house.

“When I went up to check, I saw my mom bed on fire,” he said.

He grabbed a hose and ran up­stairs in an at­tempt to ex­tin­guish the flames.

“By the time I was up there, the fire got big­ger and big­ger,” he said.

His broth­er be­gan scream­ing for him, while his moth­er al­so cried out as pan­ic spread through the house.

When fire­fight­ers ar­rived, Nehru said he re­mained with them for about two hours, help­ing them nav­i­gate the lay­out of the house and en­sur­ing the fire did not spread fur­ther.

“About an hour af­ter the fire­men came, I had to be on foot with every­body, up and down with them. I was in and out of the smoke. I had on no mask,” he said.

“I can’t catch my breath up to now. My chest still hurt­ing. I got a lit­tle mi­nor burn, but I am okay.”

Nehru said he shares a close bond with his broth­er and was re­lieved that his fam­i­ly sur­vived the or­deal.

“I’m main­ly hap­py my broth­er, my mom, every­body’s safe. My dad okay and thank God for life and we move for­ward.”

But the fam­i­ly lost al­most every­thing in the blaze, in­clud­ing per­son­al doc­u­ments, cloth­ing, fur­ni­ture, jew­ellery, mon­ey and house­hold be­long­ings.

“Every­thing gone straight down, from bed straight down to ash­es in the ground. All the walls cracked up, the foun­da­tion, every­thing cracked up, every­thing gone,” he said.

De­spite the loss, the fam­i­ly re­opened their busi­ness­es yes­ter­day.

“We lost jew­ellery, we lost mon­ey, we lost ba­si­cal­ly every­thing. We have to start back over from fresh, from the be­gin­ning, like a new­born ba­by,” Nehru said.

“It’s hard now. And the place is get­ting worse. This coun­try is not get­ting bet­ter. Every­thing is get­ting more hard­er in life now. You can’t move for­ward. You just have to get up and try and make the best out of every­thing.”

He said busi­ness had al­ready been dif­fi­cult, par­tic­u­lar­ly since the high­way was ex­tend­ed to Point Fortin, which he said had sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced sales.

“It is a strug­gle right now. But we’re try­ing to go for­ward.”

His younger broth­er, who is ex­pect­ed to sit the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment next year, al­so lost all his school sup­plies.

“He has noth­ing right now. He has to start back from fresh,” Nehru said.

The fam­i­ly said they no­ticed sparks com­ing from the elec­tric­i­ty wire lead­ing to the house short­ly be­fore the fire broke out. Fire of­fi­cials have not yet de­ter­mined the cause of the blaze.

The main liv­ing quar­ters were de­stroyed, forc­ing the fam­i­ly to tem­porar­i­ly stay in a sep­a­rate room on the up­per floor.

Any­one will­ing to as­sist the fam­i­ly can con­tact them at 399-2594.