Belmont fire leaves family of four homeless

A dev­as­tat­ing blaze in Up­per Leon Hill, Bel­mont, has left 65-year-old res­i­dent Yvonne Arnold and her fam­i­ly home­less af­ter their two-storey home was com­plete­ly de­stroyed on Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

Arnold, who lived at Pole A66 with her two adult chil­dren and grand­son, re­count­ed the ter­ri­fy­ing mo­ments when the fire spread rapid­ly from a near­by area.

“Yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) af­ter­noon, around 1.47, I heard a crack and a fire. When I came out­side, I saw a lit­tle fire over yon­der. I told the gen­tle­men near­by that the fire go­ing to come quite here. Be­fore I could fin­ish, the breeze come and the fire was right up up­on me,” she said.

De­spite calls to both the Bel­mont and Mor­vant fire sta­tions, Arnold said the re­sponse was in­suf­fi­cient.

Fire of­fi­cers from Bel­mont ar­rived with a small ap­pli­ance and be­gan wet­ting the back and sides of the prop­er­ty. How­ev­er, strong winds and near­by veg­e­ta­tion, in­clud­ing co­conut trees and bam­boo, quick­ly fu­elled the flames.

“They wet the front, they wet the side, every­thing. But when they done, they say it don’t have any wa­ter. Time they leave and go, that is when part of my house end up burn­ing down, com­plete­ly burned to the ground,” Arnold ex­plained.

She said they lost every­thing in the fire, in­clud­ing fur­ni­ture, ap­pli­ances, doc­u­ments and per­son­al be­long­ings. Arnold said on­ly the clothes they were wear­ing at the time were spared.

“All I re­main with was a pants and a top. My daugh­ter, her work clothes, my son, his work clothes, and my grand­son, his school clothes. That is all,” she said.

The de­struc­tion has left the fam­i­ly scat­tered, with each mem­ber seek­ing tem­po­rary shel­ter at rel­a­tives’ and friends’ homes. Arnold her­self is stay­ing with her niece.

“We don’t have any way to sleep. Every­body’s scat­tered. My daugh­ter by some­body in Mor­vant, my son by a friend down in Bel­mont, and I am over on the oth­er side,” she said.

Arnold es­ti­mat­ed the val­ue of her home to be in the mil­lions, giv­en the years of in­vest­ment and the pos­ses­sions ac­cu­mu­lat­ed.

“Every sin­gle thing you could think about, I had here. Every­thing I worked for gone. I am about age 65, so you could imag­ine how much years I strug­gle to come this far and to lose it be­cause of some id­iot light fire down in the back,” she lament­ed.

The coun­cil­lor for the area has since reached out to Arnold, promis­ing to meet with her and her fam­i­ly to dis­cuss as­sis­tance. She ex­pressed grat­i­tude for the sup­port but em­pha­sised the ur­gent need for help from the wider pub­lic.

“Yes, I will take as­sis­tance from the pub­lic be­cause I lost every­thing like my grand­son’s school­books, my son’s clothes, down to my ID card, pass­port, dri­ver’s per­mit. Every­thing is de­stroyed,” she said.

Arnold, vis­i­bly shak­en, ad­mit­ted she has not slept or eat­en prop­er­ly since the fire.

“I don’t know if I will sleep tonight. I don’t have a taste in my mouth to eat some­thing. That is how bad the sit­u­a­tion is,” she said.

Any­one will­ing to as­sist Arnold and her fam­i­ly can con­tact 794-1520.