Resident calls for more empathy after fatal East PoS fire

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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An East Port-of-Spain res­i­dent who as­sist­ed in res­cu­ing a man from a dead­ly fire on Fri­day night is ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic to show more em­pa­thy.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his Prince Street busi­ness, the man, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said that while he was help­ing the in­jured man—who suf­fered a bro­ken leg—on­look­ers were di­rect­ing him and oth­ers on what to do, but re­fused to as­sist, choos­ing in­stead to record the in­ci­dent on their phones.

“What I don’t like about the whole thing is that when we came down­stairs with the guy, the whole street was full of peo­ple. Every­body just had a cell phone, just video­tap­ing. I mean, there’s noth­ing much you could do, but we could at least help out with the sit­u­a­tion, you un­der­stand what I’m say­ing? Every­body just on the phone and they’re telling me to move him out of the way, in­stead of some­body com­ing to as­sist us. I didn’t like that part.”

The man said he was at home op­po­site the Co­ehlo Build­ing when the fire broke out, and he im­me­di­ate­ly went in­to ac­tion.

“I have a part­ner liv­ing up­stairs with his son, so I walked the whole street look­ing, look­ing for him and I didn’t see him. So I de­cid­ed I would go and run up­stairs to see if I could as­sist him if he was trapped or any­thing. When I reached up to go in­to the en­trance, it was full of smoke. I was shout­ing, shout­ing, shout­ing, my broth­er-in-law come and tell me let we go back down­stairs.”

He said that while leav­ing, he saw a child who told him that his fa­ther was in need of help.

He said that with the help of two oth­er men and his broth­er-in-law, they were able to car­ry the man out of the build­ing.

The man said there was on­ly smoke on the sec­ond floor where the in­jured man was res­cued. How­ev­er, there was fire on the third floor where two women died.

Ac­cord­ing to fire of­fi­cials, they re­spond­ed to a fire at the Co­ehlo Build­ing along Prince Street be­tween Char­lotte and Nel­son Streets around 9.30 pm on Fri­day.

Fire of­fi­cers told Guardian Me­dia that af­ter ex­tin­guish­ing the blaze, they left around 2.30 am and re­turned about four hours lat­er when light­ing con­di­tions were more suit­able to com­plete their in­ves­ti­ga­tion, as elec­tric­i­ty had been cut to sur­round­ing build­ings dur­ing the fire.

Dur­ing a walk­through of the third floor, where the fire was most­ly con­tained, of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered the bod­ies of the two women, iden­ti­fied as 23-year-old Aaliyah Grif­fith and 60-year-old Su­san Ram­lo­gan, in a bath­room and a bed­room.

The man praised the fire ser­vice for what he de­scribed as a quick re­sponse.

Asked if he con­sid­ered him­self a hero, he said: “I wouldn’t say I is a hero, but I would do the same for any­body. If I could help any­body, I would. I wouldn’t say I was a hero. It’s a life we’re talk­ing about and I would ex­pect some­body to do me the same, help me out the same way.”