Trinidad: Boy, 7, burns down home by accident

Pat Mc Intye of Basse Terre Village in Moruga looks at the remains of her home which was completely destroyed by fire on Monday.
Pat Mc Intye of Basse Terre Village in Moruga looks at the remains of her home which was completely destroyed by fire on Monday.

(Trinidad Guardian) A sev­en-year-0ld boy play­ing with match­es ac­ci­den­tal­ly torched his fam­i­ly’s home, leav­ing 11 peo­ple home­less.

With their home now de­stroyed, a Moru­ga fam­i­ly is now plan­ning a “sit down” with their chil­dren to dis­cuss fire safe­ty.

The fire that de­stroyed the Mc In­tyres’ four-apart­ment fam­i­ly home left six adults and five chil­dren with on­ly the clothes on their backs. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, when in­ves­ti­ga­tors spoke to the child’s moth­er, she ad­mit­ted that her son was play­ing with match­es and ac­ci­den­tal­ly set the mat­tress on fire.

Pat Mc In­tyre told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that most of the fam­i­ly was at home along Richard­son Street, Basse Terre on Mon­day.

She was in her up­per apart­ment mak­ing a few calls and her daugh­ter, who at­tends the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean, was com­plet­ing her as­sign­ments when smoke start­ed ris­ing through the floor­boards.

With heat in­ten­si­fy­ing quick­ly, she said they ran down­stairs and re­alised that the smoke was sur­round­ing the house.

“I tried to go back up, but the smoke was black. The neigh­bours came out and tried to out it, but things start­ed ex­plod­ing so we just had to leave every­thing and head for the road. The house was very old, so it hap­pened very fast,” Mc In­tyre said.

The Princes Town Fire Sta­tion was con­tact­ed but the fire ten­ders had to leave Williamsville to reach Moru­ga. By the time they ar­rived, there was noth­ing to save. Even the pet rab­bit Sparkle had al­ready per­ished.

The fam­i­ly spent the night at var­i­ous rel­a­tives and re­turned to ru­ins yes­ter­day to de­cide on their step for­ward. Mc In­trye said that of­fi­cials from the Moru­ga/Table­land Con­stituen­cy Of­fice had pro­vid­ed gro­ceries as well as church mem­bers and oth­er peo­ple brought food and cloth­ing.

She said one of her nephews has to write the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tions on April 4 and has lost all his books and uni­forms. She said the fam­i­ly was hop­ing to re­build the house that she has lived in since she was a ba­by and is hop­ing to get build­ing ma­te­ri­als soon.