Email

Print

30 people are homeless after a long barracks burnt down today in Seine Byte village.  

The long barracks which had 14 low income units caught on fire at around 2:15 this afternoon.  

Villagers rushed to put out the flames creating a bucket brigade to assist the fire truck.  In the thick of the crowd was Village vice Chairman Kirwin Ramirez. We spoke to him by phone and he told us that the destruction of the 14 rooms has left a number of villagers homeless.

Kirwin Ramirez - Vice Chairman, Seine Bight Village
"I was coming from Placencia when I saw a little bit of smoke in the air. I ran over there as fast as I could and we started to use bucket and we started to break the pipe to see in the fire was gonna out and we ran over there we have a lot of young people that were around at that time and everybody getting buckets and trying to out the fire and stuff and so I was trying my best and my people were trying their best to out the fire but at that time the fire was blazing high the post, the electric post was sparkling because it caught fire and stuff there was so much smoke in the air. The heat the blazing heat out there at the top of the post, so basically what started the fire is unknown right now but what I know when I was there the people who live around the area they saw that one of the houses was catching fire and then the villagers quickly came together as one and they were trying to out the fire at that time but the fire was moving so fast.00:52

"Majority of the people who live in that long barracks are people who work so at that time they were at work when their houses started catching on fire. We have quite an amount of young kids that live in that place. We called the fire-truck and the fire-truck came in and they did what they can do and the villagers were already trying to put out the fire but it’s so sad to see the houses burning and a lot of the people do not have any home to stay, but it was 14 rooms and all of those rooms have burned down and in each one of those rooms, we have people living there with their kids. So it’s a great loss for the community and for the people."

And Ramirez says that villagers who cannot turn to family will be housed in the Community Center until they are able to get back on their feet. 

If you’d like to offer assistance to those that lost their homes in today’s fire you can contact the vice-chairman by email at kirwinramirez@gmail.com or by phone at 630-7301.