UP IN FLAMES
Firemen fight a blaze with a leaking hose at 77A Beeston Street in Kingston, yesterday.
Right: Marcia Brown tries to find comfort from her only child, nine-yearold Shanika Morgan, after she lost all her possessions in a fire that destroyed her home at 77A Beeston Street in Kingston.
Eight persons were left homeless yesterday after their homes at 77A Beeston Street in Kingston were set ablaze by a woman believed to be of unsound mind.
Minutes after noon, Marcia Brown, a janitor at the Kingston Public Hospital, lost her home in the fire that left her, four other adults, as well as three children, without a place to live.
Brown told The Gleaner she was inside the building lying down when the mentally unstable woman lit the fire.
“The mad gyal light upstairs a fire and all I could do was grab my daughter and run out,” said Brown.
Brown lived in the building, which once housed a business, with her mother, father, daughter, and two nieces.
Her sister, who lived in the other building on the property, also lost everything.
The other adult was the woman who started the fire, who lived above Brown’s home.
Brown said she lost everything in the blaze and didn’t have a clue where to go or what to do.
“When I heard that the place was on fire, I only had time to just save me and my daughter’s lives. It’s because the house is made of board, and I even lost the material I spent all my money on buying so I could build my house.”
Assistant Superintendent of York Park Fire Station John Morais estimated the damage at 77A Beeston Street at $1 million and the risk damage at $3 million. Morais also added that the fire spread to 48 Oxford Street to a one-bedroom home and the damage sustained to it was estimated at $300,000. There were no injuries sustained in the fire.