Fire destroys Claxton Bay home

A family of six was dislocated on Tuesday after a fire gutted their two-storey house at the corner of Soledad Road and Claxton Bay Main Road.

Newsday was told the blaze started on the western side of the house around 2 pm and engulfed the entire structure in a matter of minutes.

When Newsday arrived at the scene around 4 pm, fire officers were securing the scene and doing last minutes checks. While doing so, the home’s occupants distributed water to them.

Traffic also stretched along the Claxton Bay Main Road as it was closed off to accommodate the emergency responders.

A close relative of the home’s owner, who did not want to be named, told Newsday six people lived at the house but only two were there at the time of the fire. Both escaped unharmed.

Constructed in the 1950s, the relative said the home held fond memories.

For now, the cause of the fire remains unknown. The home’s displaced occupants will stay with relatives for the time being.

One worker at a nearby minimart, who did not want to be named, recalled calling the fire service at 2.05 pm when they saw the house was on fire.

The worker said, “The fire started on the western side of the building between the tyre shop and the house.

“The owner of the house is one of the elders of the community and everybody has a lot of respect for him. Everybody does call him Cha Cha and some does call him Papi.”

The worker said a satellite dish to the front of the house was a community symbol.

He explained, “Ever since we little, we know that satellite dish. Before it had cable, and we just had one TV station in Trinidad, with that satellite dish we used to pick up lil things on TV home by us.”

Another worker Nick Ramdan said as the fire quickly spread, he saw one man trying to douse a part of the house with buckets of water.