AS 23-year-old Roxanne Gill recalled the moments leading up to last Saturday night’s fire that destroyed the house in which she and her family lived, her eyes seemed to be searching for a clue to why the tragedy happened.
Gill, one of eight occupants of the wall-and-timber house, was speaking to the DAILY NATION yesterday, hours after the blaze, occurring around 9:30 p.m., engulfed the rented house at Gitten’s Road, Government Hill, St. Michael, destroying the contents.
Gill said that while investigating the strong smell of something burning, she pushed her mother’s bedroom door and saw flames.
“I see fire coming up from the blinds and things by the window and from underneath the bed,” she said. “I tell them to bring some water, the house pon fire.”
It was at this time that her boyfriend rushed outside with her baby.
“Me and my brother-in-law – my sister’s boyfriend – went to get some water from the bathroom and kitchen,” Gill continued. [By the] time we get back, the whole bedroom was pon fire. The front-house was pun fire.”
She said she was outside when she remembered that her father and uncle were in their beds.
“I end up running back inside the house, waking up the two of them and carrying them through the back door, down through the back paling into the next gap,” she said.
A car parked in front of the house was also damaged by the fire.
According to Gill, Member of Parliament for the area, Kenny Best, secured accommodation for the family. The immediate future for the family is still uncertain, Gill said.
Two units from the Barbados Fire Service responded to the call.
