Fire chief says Investigations into New Year’s fire ‘going good!’

In response to the disastrous New Year’s Day fire in Rose Hill, Castries, a committee has been formed to represent the victims. The fire destroyed seven homes and affected twenty-one individuals, the youngest a three-month old baby girl. Three other children, aged five, eleven and fourteen, were also impacted. The committee has since been in dialogue with the Ministry of Equity and Volunteer Saint Lucia that are jointly handling recovery efforts. Ms. Diane Felicien is the consultant to the National Volunteer programme.  

She told the STAR: “We’ve been liaising with the public and we’ve been getting contributions from volunteers. We will be getting contributions from the Tapion Hospital and also members of the public.” Persons who wish to contribute can make donations at Volunteer Saint Lucia, located at the Office of the Prime Minister in the Greaham Louisy Building, Castries. Donations may include food hampers, clothing, toiletries and tools. She explained that some of the victims include joiners, cooks and carvers so the tools are required to enable them to resume work in the fastest possible time. 

This week Volunteer Saint Lucia handed out supplies to the victims, including clothing, school supplies and toiletries. Also, thanks to the donations received, the affected children have been able to attend school.  Ms. Felicien indicated that the organisation, alongside the Ministry of Equity, is in the process of setting up a bank account to allow for persons to contribute monetarily. The organisation can be reached at 468 2125.

Nicole Nelson heads the special committee and gave insight into the rebuilding efforts. She indicated that they are waiting on fire extracts from the fire service so they can go ahead. (A fire extract gives account of the cost of damage, and what was lost in the fire.) “The fire service has been working on it,” she said. “We have three of them pending still. The reason for this is because they were not able to get in touch with some victims as speedily as they wanted to.”

She expressed gratitude to all those who’ve contributed thus far and said, “We’ve had quite a bit of clothing donated so, now that we’re almost to the point where he have most of our documents, we’re getting ready to start asking for contributions, such as materials, and monetarily, so that we can rebuild our homes.”

Meanwhile, statistics obtained from the Saint Lucia fire service indicate that in 2018 there were sixty-four calls related to structural fires. A representative said, “Most of the fires were of undetermined origin.” That includes the Folk Research Centre, in March.  

Will the Rose Hill fire suffer the same outcome as many before it? Speaking on the investigation into the New Year’s blaze, Deputy Fire Chief George Victorin said investigations are in progress and “going good so far”.  He added that the process can take some time but there are “no major hindrances”.