Olympian precious property destroyed by fire
After he watched fire razed his property on Skibo Avenue in Kingston yesterday, Olympian Rupert Hoilett says the place will never be able to recreate the memories and personality of the place he built 30 years ago.
“This place has a lot of memories. It’s a place with a personality. I started out not with that intention but that is how it worked out,” he said firefighters from York Park brought the blaze under control.
“They did a good job with the resources they had because they ran out of water.”
The former Kingston College track star’s residence, which is situated metres away, remained untouched from the blaze which started in the wee hours of yesterday morning. However, there was severe damage to the furniture shop he rents to a client.
According to Hoilett, he woke up to the smoke and the flames around the property and recalled that someone phoned the fire department at 7:15 a.m.
The York Park Fire Brigade was the first to respond to the scene. A member of the team said that the fire was confined to the furniture shop, which was rented on Hoilett’s property and then spread to an old car. They encountered difficulties when the truck ran out of water and the hydrants located in the vicinity were not working. They received assistance from the Stony Hill and Trench Town fire stations and helped to contain and extinguish the blaze. Hoilett was thankful for their team’s efforts considering the challenges they faced.
He says that an assessment of what was lost in the blaze would be required as they are still yet to determine the cause of the fire. He reflected on the residence which holds memories for him. “The first thing is to clear up and to see what really happened. The place is such that you cant rebuild on that. You have to build again.”
Hoilett emerged from obscurity to represent Jamaica in the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo while still a student of Kingston College. He burst on to the scene a year earlier at Boys Championships by winning the 440 yards race in 49.3 seconds, at the time the first sub-50 clocking in the history of the event. He sealed his place on the Jamaica team to Tokyo with an improved 49.1 seconds at Champs in 1964. He was given the prestigious honour of carrying the nation’s flag at the opening ceremonies.