Fire damages 20-room house ... blaze started moments after 6-y-o asked if concrete can burn

Fire suspected to have been started by a minor, destroyed a section of a 20-room apartment building in Hylton Lane, Yallahs in St Thomas yesterday.

Owner of the house, 77-Year-old Gloria Henry, who also occupies a section of the building along with her son and grandson, told

that about 3 p.m., she was home with the minor when the fire broke out.

“Me and mi six-year-old grandson was here. Mi hear him seh to me. Grandma, concrete house can burn down?” And me say ‘Of course’, and then mi ask why him seh dat. He said: ‘The windows and the doors will burn off but the concrete will remain the same and so it can wash off?” Henry said.

She said that she responded: Yes, to her

grandson’s question. A few moments after the brief dialogue, she noticed a popping sound coming from one of the rooms in which she had some furniture stored.

“It sound like one of the mosquito zapper suh I said ‘A wah sound suh?’ Him (grandson) seh mi fi go look. So I asked him what he meant and then he said ‘A fire’. Suh me seh how fire a come from in deh suh? Him run go look inside and start seh ‘Fire, grandma.”

The elderly woman said that upon the realisation that the place was indeed on fire, she rushed and filled two buckets of water, splashed them inside before giving her grandson the keys to the front grille where they both made their exit.

They made an alarm shouting: “Fire!” and two men who were upstairs the apartment came down to assist them.

And regards to speculations pointing to her grandchild Henry said: “The little boy keep on saying is not him, is not him so I don’t even know.”

The Yallahs Fire Department was contacted and with the help from a unit from Morant Bay, the firefighters managed to put out the blaze.

“Black smoke could be spotted from kilometres away but what happened is the concrete decking confined the fire to downstairs as it could only breathe through the windows as it fed on the furniture,” district officer from the Yallahs Fire Department Delroy Williams said.

“There’s a total of 20 rooms, 10 upstairs and 10 downstairs. One room with furniture stored in it is completely burned out, while seven adjacent rooms are heavily stained by smoke. The damage is not assessed as yet as we are still carrying out further inspection,” Williams added.