PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

A Gon­za­les fam­i­ly of nine is now try­ing to piece back their lives af­ter fire com­plete­ly gut­ted their fam­i­ly home last week Mon­day.

The tragedy broke back painful mem­o­ries for Pa­tri­cia Mc­Queen Her­bert, who ex­pe­ri­enced los­ing her home to fire 17 years ear­li­er.

“It hard to loss every­thing and this is a the sec­ond time around yuh un­der­stand,” she said at the gut­ted home yes­ter­day.

In the back stood two melt­ed wa­ter tanks, the fraz­zled re­mains of a wash­ing ma­chine and half burnt Christ­mas tree and the grim rem­nants of what once housed a fam­i­ly of nine.

A tear­ful Mc­Queen re­count­ed the phone call she re­ceived at mid­day last Mon­day stat­ing that smoke was seen ris­ing from near her home.

Fear­ful for her hus­band and her moth­er in law, who are both un­able to walk she called around fu­ri­ous­ly.

Her grand­chil­dren, who were at home do­ing on­line class­es at the time, were able to get ahold of their un­cle.

“My son came he get his fa­ther out, and those kids and them they run out of the house. My grand­son here was try­ing to go back to see if he could have come back to save any­thing but I just grate­ful that they have life and they here to­day,” a tear­ful Mc­Queen Her­bert said.

The rest of the home was razed in less than five min­utes af­ter her rel­a­tives got to safe­ty.

Of­fi­cers from Wright­son Road Head­quar­ters re­spond­ed to the fire with­in 30 min­utes but the two storey, four bed­room home was de­stroyed in spite of their ef­forts.

While try­ing to look at the glass half-full, she broke down and she re­called the tri­als the fam­i­ly un­der­went be­fore when their home was burnt to the ground fol­low­ing an ar­son at­tack in 2004.

Once again they are start­ing from scratch as the fam­i­ly has had to de­pend on the aid of good samar­i­tans for shel­ter at this time.

“Some so, some so the fam­i­ly split up but every­thing go work out,’ she said, but she ad­mit­ted she was less than com­fort­able with the fam­i­ly be­ing split at this time.

She is plead­ing for what­ev­er as­sis­tance can be sent her way for the fam­i­ly, with a rel­a­tive based in New York even start­ing a go­fundme to raise funds as the fam­i­ly tries to re­gain their feet.

The cause of the fire has not yet been de­ter­mined, but the es­ti­mat­ed cost of dam­age has been placed at $500,000.