Camille McEach­nie

Amid heat­ed cam­paign­ing for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Jan­u­ary 25 elec­tions, an­oth­er sit­u­a­tion is gain­ing the at­ten­tion of To­bag­o­ni­ans­—a “mys­te­ri­ous” fire seems to be fol­low­ing the George fam­i­ly of Cas­tara. The fam­i­ly has been the vic­tim of five fires in five weeks, and the fam­i­ly’s sixth in months.

Fire of­fi­cials are baf­fled by the sit­u­a­tion.

“This is a mon­ster sit­u­a­tion that none of us have a so­lu­tion for as yet,” David Joseph-Thomas, fire of­fi­cer told Guardian Me­dia.

He said eight of the 13 fam­i­ly mem­bers af­fect­ed by the sit­u­a­tion are now home­less.

“No­body was will­ing to ac­com­mo­date them be­cause every­where they have gone over the past month went up in flames,” the fire of­fi­cial said.

He added, “There is no end in sight in terms of what is mo­ti­vat­ing that at­tack...if it’s an at­tack whether it be nor­mal or oth­er­wise. There is no rea­son that we can sub­stan­tial­ly put for­ward. We are now in the process of elim­i­na­tion and look­ing for com­mon­al­i­ties.”

Joseph-Thomas al­so said all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the po­lice, So­cial Ser­vices De­part­ment and the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency, met on Jan­u­ary 7 to dis­cuss the mat­ter as the sit­u­a­tion is now grim.

Asked if of­fi­cials had dis­cussed spir­i­tu­al help for the fam­i­ly as sug­gest­ed by nu­mer­ous per­sons on so­cial me­dia af­ter the third fire, Joseph-Thomas said, it was not a se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion.

“Last night, a church was burned. We would ex­pect in a sit­u­a­tion like that, you would not have se­ri­ous spir­i­tu­al chal­lenges. We are not in a po­si­tion to say which pow­er su­per­sedes which pow­er. Al­though it is some­thing that you can fac­tor in to the sit­u­a­tion, I will not con­clude that those are the cir­cum­stances.”

The fam­i­ly’s sit­u­a­tion be­came pub­lic af­ter the fire on Christ­mas Eve last year.

Ac­cord­ing to fire of­fi­cials, there was an­oth­er fire on Jan­u­ary 3, one on Jan­u­ary 5, and an­oth­er on Jan­u­ary 6. On Jan­u­ary 5, the down­stairs apart­ment of the Pen­te­costal church, where the fam­i­ly stayed caught afire. On Jan­u­ary 6, the church burned.

This is the fam­i­ly’s sixth fire, as a restau­rant, owned by a fam­i­ly mem­ber, burned months ago, the fire of­fi­cial said.

Joseph-Thomas of­fi­cials say they are hop­ing to stop the fires and keep the fam­i­ly safe.