By John Myers, Jnr. Staff Reporter
At left: A fireman fighting yesterday's blaze. At right: These women and their children comfort themselves yesterday on Fleet Street, central Kingston, after fire, the cause of which could not be determined, destroyed six houses on Tower and Fleet streets. - Rudolph Brown/Staff Photographer
FIRE destroyed six houses on Fleet and Tower streets in central Kingston yesterday, leaving 21 persons homeless, but no lives were lost in the blaze.
Residents of the area said the fire started about 1:35 p.m. and quickly engulfed six small wooden houses in a tenement yard. According to one resident, Patricia Tomlinson, "I was inside and a hear somebody shout 'Fire', and when I came to the gate, I saw the smoke." However, the residents are blaming what they said was the tardy arrival of the Fire Brigade for the total destruction of the houses.
Ms. Tomlinson said, "I called (the Fire Brigade) and they seh they are on their way." She said that after not seeing them within "a reasonable time, I call four consecutive times again before they eventually came; that time the whole place was ablaze."
But District Officer Keith Harris of the Rollington Town Fire Brigade Station said that if the firemen had been told that the fire was on Fleet Street, they would have reached earlier, but they were misinformed.
His team eventually brought the fire under control, he said, but had been unable to ascertain the cause of the fire. Of the six houses destroyed in the blaze, four houses were on Fleet Street and two on Tower Street, he said.
The thick smoke which blackened the afternoon sky was a frightening indication of the devastation wreaked by the fire. When The Gleaner visited the scene, Angella McDermott, one of the fire victims, stood in disbelief as she watched the firemen put a damper on the flames she escaped but which spared nothing of her life's toil.
A tearful Ms. McDermot, a mother of four, said, "I was at the fish market selling when a hear." She said her children were at school. Other tenants managed to salvage a few pieces of furniture from the flames.
Refrigerators, television sets, beds, clothes lined the sidewalk crowded with curious onlookers.
Judith Richards, 13, counted her blessings. She said she was alone at home sleeping and was rescued by neighbours before the fire engulfed her house.
The fire was put out by two units from York Park and one from Rollington Town fire stations.
