NINETY-YEAR-OLD former hotel worker and carpenter Goulbourne Callender died early yesterday in a fire that caught his family sleeping.
His 50-year-old daughter Jacqueline Weekes told the DAILY NATION: “We tried to save him, but the heat was too intense.”
Callender, an amputee who used a wheelchair, was one of ten people living in the five-bedroom concrete home in Cane Vale, Christ Church. Three children, aged 14, 15 and 16, lived there.
The home was extensively damaged and most of the contents destroyed by the fire. “All we saved was the clothes on our backs,” Weekes said. “We still have the two dogs and maybe the washing machines.”
She was unsure what caused the fire but said when she awoke, she found the ceiling ablaze. Her father had died of “smoke inhalation” but the other occupants of the house had managed to escape injury.
Yesterday Weekes was staying with her older sister Colleen Pitt in Silver Hill, Christ Church. She said the occupants of the Cane Vale home, including her two children, had gone to stay at other houses, with relatives and friends.
She described her father as a man who “didn’t like noise in his ears”. He “loved his children” and his favourite foods were sweet potatoes, soup and cou cou, she reported.
Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the unnatural death.
Members of the Barbados Fire Service, led by Acting Chief Fire Officer Maynard, along with three fire tenders, were deployed to the scene. (TY/PR)
