An­na-Lisa Paul

“Every time we pass this build­ing…it is a re­minder of what hap­pened here,” said a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) ten­ant in Trou Macaque, Laven­tille, as she point­ed at a near­by four-storey burnt out struc­ture.

The ru­ins are a grim re­minder in the com­mu­ni­ty that still grieves for the lives lost ear­ly on the morn­ing of De­cem­ber 20, 2011.

The ten­ant, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said she was able to hear the screams of those who died if she clos­es her eyes. She still has the pic­tures from that fate­ful night stored on her cell phone.

The 53-year-old woman, who has been liv­ing at near­by Build­ing 4 since she was five, said al­though it’s been eight years, the HDC “is do­ing noth­ing about the build­ing.” She said al­though the en­trances have been blocked off, ten­ants of the oth­er HDC build­ings are wor­ried that a fire haz­ard still ex­ists.

“The HDC don’t want to fix any­thing,” she de­clared.

Fol­low­ing the fire which claimed four lives and an un­born ba­by, HDC of­fi­cials had promised that old­er apart­ment build­ings would be retro­fit­ted with emer­gency es­capes and fire ex­tin­guish­ers.

The de­ceased in­clud­ed ten-month-old Des­tiny Lara, two-year-old Denis­sya Camp­bell, Akeem Young, 15, and Lisa Charles, 46, who was more than five months preg­nant.

Fire ex­tin­guish­ers were placed in the stair­well on each floor of the re­main­ing build­ings but when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day, they were all miss­ing. Ten­ants said they were tak­en by peo­ple liv­ing in the apart­ments.

Emer­gency ex­its have not been in­stalled and wa­ter tanks in­stalled by the HDC short­ly af­ter the fire were re­moved fol­low­ing re­ports that arms and am­mu­ni­tion were be­ing hid­den in them.

A ten­ant, who pays rent of $100 a month, feels the com­mu­ni­ty has been ne­glect­ed by the HDC.

“Since be­fore Christ­mas, I called them be­cause my toi­let is not flush­ing and up to now, noth­ing.”

She is ap­peal­ing to the HDC to de­mol­ish the burnt out struc­ture.

“This is just a re­minder of what we went through and it is not a nice feel­ing,” she said.

A res­i­dent of Build­ing 3, re­count­ing the morn­ing of the fire, de­scribed it as “a hor­ror. It was some­thing like you would see in the movies, it was hard to watch peo­ple you know burn to death.”

She said HDC of­fi­cials vis­it­ed late last year to as­sess the struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty of the build­ing and there is talk that it might be re­fur­bished and turned in­to day-care and home-work fa­cil­i­ty.

A young man liv­ing next to the hous­ing scheme said: “Every­thing go­ing on every­where else but noth­ing here. I just want to see this place come back the way it used to be.”

Maliq Gumbs, who lives at Build­ing 1, said: “The HDC was sup­posed to come since last year to fix the front door be­cause they in­stalled it wrong but we still wait­ing.”

Hold­ing his daugh­ter’s hand as they left their ground-floor apart­ment, Gumbs said he is con­cerned that many more lives could be lost if there was an­oth­er fire.

Glo­ria Mas­si­ah said she wants the light fix­tures in the stair­wells to be re­paired as she is wor­ried to ven­ture out af­ter 6 pm.

Mes­si­ah, 56, used a broom-stick to point to the var­i­ous many leaks in her mod­est two-bed­room apart­ment. She al­so point­ed out where the walls are swollen with wa­ter. She said she is afraid to touch it as it might start flood­ing her apart­ment.

Claim­ing she had paid her rent up to March, Mas­si­ah said: “They know me re­al good at HDC. When I went in there, a young boy come and say he not tak­ing any more re­ports from me, they know me too good.

“I tired mak­ing re­ports and they do­ing noth­ing. We pay­ing our rent and they not do­ing any­thing. Does any­body care? You feel they care about us? Once we pay the rent, they ain’t busi­ness.”

Mas­si­ah’s daugh­ter Di­ane, 36, has been liv­ing in the third-floor apart­ment in the same build­ing for the past nine years. The moth­er of three chil­dren aged 14, 12 and ten, said she has to take time off work when­ev­er HDC sched­ules a vis­it.

Ger­ard Hink­son, 50, who has been liv­ing in the build­ing for the past 20 years said he has de­vel­oped a sys­tem to get things done.

“I does go and make noise and get my things fixed,” he said.

Hink­son ad­mit­ted that he had tak­en one of the fire ex­tin­guish­ers from the hall­way and in­stalled it in his apart­ment.

“I watched peo­ple jump­ing out of that build­ing and I liv­ing on the top floor in my build­ing so I hook up my thing in­side by me, so in case of any fire, I could help my­self and my neigh­bours,” he said.

Al­though an email was sent to the HDC’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Of­fi­cer Dike Noel seek­ing in­for­ma­tion, no re­sponse was re­ceived up to yes­ter­day.