Trinidad family of 3 perishes in blaze

A crowd looks on as members of the Singh family who died in a fire at their Samaroo Street, Aranguez, home yesterday, are taken away by undertakers.
A crowd looks on as members of the Singh family who died in a fire at their Samaroo Street, Aranguez, home yesterday, are taken away by undertakers.

(Trinidad Guardian) Des­per­ate to get the at­ten­tion of any­one to come to his fam­i­ly’s aid, Ra­jku­mar Singh, 70, screamed from his win­dow for help be­fore dawn on Wednesday as fire trapped his fam­i­ly in­side.

His screams were heard, but his neigh­bours could not find a way to save him, his wife and his son as the fire spread through the top storey of their Sama­roo Street, Aranguez home.

Rel­a­tives told Guardian Me­dia, that his wife, Leela Singh, 68, be­came aware of the fire when she heard a noise in the front room of the build­ing short­ly af­ter 2.30 am.

When she left her bed­room to in­ves­ti­gate, she saw the fire spread­ing across the house. She awoke her hus­band, Ra­jku­mar, and at­tempt­ed to call out to their son, Shi­va, 35, who was asleep in his bed­room.

They were not able to wake him im­me­di­ate­ly and called the fire ser­vices short­ly be­fore 3 am. They al­so called their rel­a­tives to tell them what was hap­pen­ing. The el­der Singh called out to his neigh­bours to help but they could not find a lad­der tall enough to get the fam­i­ly out of the house.

They were, how­ev­er, able to res­cue a woman and child who lived in an apart­ment on the ground floor of the build­ing.

The woman and her son were awok­en and tak­en from the apart­ment by a neigh­bour who had jumped over the wall.

Fire of­fi­cers ar­rived and con­tained the fire at around 4 am, but by that time it was too late for the fam­i­ly. Fa­ther, moth­er and son were found dead in the home.

Of­fi­cers be­lieve they died of smoke in­hala­tion.

The rel­a­tives, who al­so lived near­by, said they were strug­gling to be­lieve what hap­pened, and on­ly spoke off the record at the scene of the in­ci­dent.

The home, which was main­ly dam­aged on the up­per storey, was val­ued at $2.5 mil­lion, al­though po­lice said that based on the age of the struc­ture it had like­ly de­val­ued to a low­er fig­ure. The cause of the fire was still to be de­ter­mined.

Cor­po­ral Khan of the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion is lead­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent.