HOUSE?FIRES, mysterious or accidental, never make for comfortable acceptance by their victims. And restitution is often challenging – and mightily slow. Sometimes restoration is predestined, it seems, never to come.
Alternativeness becomes the only answer, oft-times an obsession. And in between can be traumatic.
Just Friday night Nicole Tudor and her five young children lost everything they had when their only home in Chapman Village in St Thomas all went up in smoke.
Shocked was she, and desolate her little ones, on return to their place of residence, to stumble upon a scene of patrolling police officers, fire tender and flashing beacons at the “top of the gap” – and soon after smouldering embers where once stood their house.
As debilitating for Ms Tudor was that not a single neighbour was around – and apparently not a politician either – to offer a word of solace at best, a few platitudes at worst.
It would have been difficult for a mother who has been in long-time contention with her landlord, on whose spot once stood her home. In a sense she has lost her battle with the owner of the land, though we might be led to believe there could be resolution to the matter in which the Rural Development Commission (RDC) claims to have had a signed contract by the landlord permitting Ms Tudor’s house, built by the RDC, to be on his land.
The landlord denies it; and this, along with the charge of non-payment of rent, has been at the root of the long dispute between him and the tenant.
This tragic incident raises some pertinent questions. What authority will determine right by the landlord or Ms Tudor and the RDC? And when? Does it matter now anyway? What steps will the RDC take in future to secure rightness of its placement of people on property not its very own? What right do placed people have to restitution when their RDC-built homes are destroyed? Are these domiciles insured?
Does the RDC have a responsibility to rescue Ms Tudor and her five from the floor of the living room of a one-bedroom house of a friend?
The cynics may present us with their palaver of a self-burdened mum; but the truth is Ms Tudor’s five children find themselves in circumstances not of their making. The RDC, it seems, has a responsibility to help them out of their distress.
Still, as a society, we seem to squeeze out a healthy share of goodness at times: some people have answered Ms Tudor’s call for help. This outpouring of support from the community at large is enough to slaver over.
But where in this is the RDC?