A woman who rescued three people from the house in Georgetown where a fire killed two children, aged 1 and 3, on Wednesday, says an adult female occupant of the house stood at the roadside and did not raise the alarm as the fire spread through the building.
“I don’t know if she just panicked,” Demarlie Cyrus who helped in the rescue told iWitness News on Thursday.
“But she looked calm to me when the lady was asking her why she’s not helping, when she said … she’s allergic to smoke. And she was just standing there like nothing happening,” Cyrus said.
The fire claimed the lives of Deron Junior Peters, 1, and Deiara Peters, 3, who lived at the house with their father, Deron Peters, 32.
Shemille Peters, the mother of the deceased children, lived elsewhere in St. Vincent and the siblings were among nine children who lived in the house.
The woman who was said to be standing at the roadside as the fire spread through the house was one of three adults, including a “cripple” woman, who were at home when the fire broke out.
Cyrus, who is originally from Orange Hill but lives in Georgetown, is a neighbour of the family whose house was destroyed by fire.
She told iWitness News she was doing chores at a sink outside her home when she first noticed the smoke.
“Where I’m located, you can see like down by the road very good. When I’m washing the dishes, I saw the smoke coming through the galvanize but how the house set up, I was thinking maybe they light some kind of fire outside, and the smoke just go through the house,” Cyrus said of the house, part of which is still under construction.
She said the smoke was “getting a bit too much and actually changed colour.
“It was a bit whitish at first and then it turned dark. And I’m thinking, ‘OK, that cannot just be any kind of smoke’,” she said adding that she shouted to a neighbour asking him to check out what was going on but the neighbour did not do so.
“And I’m there and the smoke started to get way higher like when people burning tyres. and the thing ah get to me,” Cyrus told iWitness News.
She said that from where she was standing, she was “seeing the young lady that’s living there, … and she was standing up at the side of the road just watching the house.
“So, I’m thinking, ‘OK, because she’s there and not panicking or saying anything, maybe it’s nothing.’ … But the smoke was getting so high and I’m watching the young lady not doing anything, thinking it can’t be nothing much since she nah do nothing.”
Cyrus said she got an urge to go and see what was happening.
“She ah turn to me and tell me look the house ah burn down.”
Cyrus said that when she looked inside the living room, it was “blazing with fire; not like that, that much fire, but blazing with fire.
“And you have another lady that lived there, but she cannot walk or anything properly and two of the children hold on to her two feet and she’s screaming for help, screaming for help.
“And that girl just stood there by the galvanise not doing anything.”
Cyrus said she had her 3-year-old daughter in her (Cyrus’) hands so she gave the toddler to the occupant of the house and warned her not to put the child down on the ground.
“… because I’m thinking if she put her down or if I just leave her and run inside there, she go run inside behind me.”
Cyrus said that when he got inside the house, the woman who has mobility challenges had two young children holding onto her legs.
“She telling the children to let go her foot and run out. … ‘Oh, God, aryo leh go me foot and run out! Leh go me foot and run out!’
“One [of the children], I don’t think she’s more than a year and another little boy, like, about 2, 3, somewhere there. I really and truly don’t know their ages but they are two small kids.
“And me just haffu, pull them off ah she and go and carry them outside and then run back to the lady.”
Cyrus said she did realise that the woman could not walk properly until she was trying to get her to run out of the building.
“I realised that she cannot help herself. So, me haffu just lift she up under her arm and going outside with her through the smoke. And we fall down in front of the gate. Literally fell down in front of the gate. I was so scared when I fell down because me think probably the fire dey behind me for how me ah run go with the woman.”
Cyrus said the other woman who lived at the house stood there and did not try to help.
“When we eventually get up back, we fight to get up back and go over back over the other side of the road and I’m asking her, ‘Is there anybody else in the house?’ And she tell me no.”
Cyrus told iWitness News that “an old man” — the deceased children’s great-grandfather was trying to put out the fire on another side of the house.
“He does build coffins and those things where he was and he was trying to put out the fire from
“I’m thinking he’s just trying to put out the fire, until I asked him why he nah come out.
“Me say, ‘Sonny, come out ah in dey. The children and dem done come out. Everybody’s here.’”
Cyrus said the man told her that a little boy was inside.
“So me ah say, ‘The girl say nobody else nah dey in dey.’ The man ah say, ‘No, No, No; yi have a little boy inside’ and he calling the boy name.”
Cyrus said she then asked the female resident of the house who was the boy that the great-grandfather was speaking about.
“And she said, ‘Oh yeah! S**t!’ And she called a little boy name. And say, ‘Yeah! He dey in dey!’
“Me say, ‘You serious!?” Cyrus said, adding that she was trying to go back through the gate when “the house like it just blow up inside.
“… and the smoke just get like dark, dark, dark and start to pour out de window and dem, through de roof even more. And de guy come out ah de gate and ah say it get a little boy inside.
“And then he’s watching my daughter, and then saying, ‘No! Ah two ah dem. Ah two ah dem dey in dey!’”
Cyrus concluded that the great-grandfather had initially mistaken her daughter for his great-granddaughter.
“So, I’m thinking that he taught how she had my child, he thought that was the little girl. That when he realised it’s not her, and she is inside the house too.”
Cyrus said that other people came and started to try to help.
She said her daughter’s grandfather threw a stone through the window to try to look for the children.
“When he threw the stone, I’m guessing the oxygen just blazed up the fire more, but there was the little boy one the bed.”
She said that at the same time that the man threw the stone, the electrical wire started “pitching” so he had to shift from the window.
When the man went back to the window, the little boy was no longer on the bed.
“Then like about two minutes after you only hear them started screaming. And that part is what break me. You only hear dem ah scream in de house. And dey scream like about a minute or two de most and then de screaming stopped completely.”
She said that at that point everyone began to intensify their effort to out the fire.
“Everything just happened so fast, me really and truly nah know wah happen after that,” Cyrus said, and speculated that the children would have been save had the alarm been raised earlier.
“Because when I was in my yard, it was like a good four or five minutes before I went down by the road when I see the smoke in the house, and she was outside by the gate, standing up over the other side of the road,” Cyrus told iWitness News.
“I was literally watching her while I’m up in my yard, saying, ‘That can’t be no regular smoke. She was there like about two, three minutes before the fire escalated in the house. … Because I’m watching her every minute to see if she’s going to say anything about fire or anything.
“And the fact she wasn’t saying anything didn’t make me think anything of it,” Cyrus said and reasons that if a fire breaks out in a house most people would scream for help.”
Cyrus told iWitness News that she had not spoken to investigators about what she witnessed and that she left the site soon after.
“I have not spoken to anybody since. I did not even stop up there. The thing just break my inside. I did not sleep,’ she told iWitness News.
She said she decided to speak to iWitness News because one of her friends told her that she should speak about what she witnessed.
Cyrus told iWitness News that she had planned to give the police statement, adding that an officer had come to where she works to buy food and told her that she would have to give a statement.
Meanwhile, another female resident of the house that burned told iWitness News separately on Thursday that she had not heard that the woman was at the side of the road and did not raise the alarm.
“I heard she was in a shock and she was there, frightened,” said the woman, who asked not to be named.
She told iWitness News she did not think that the woman would speak to anybody at the time.
“She is the one who is taking it on a lot. She read what everybody is saying on Facebook and she is crying a lot.”
She said she could not say whether the woman who allegedly did not raise the alarm had helped to bring anyone out of the house.
“She is asthmatic,” the occupant told iWitness News.
“She loved the children as if they were her own. She used to bathe the little boy. She loved them like her own,” she said.
The woman also told iWitness News that she did not know about the allegation that the other female occupant had told people that all the children had been taken out of the house.
The police have launched an investigation into the fire and are encouraging anyone with relevant information to come forward and assist with the investigation.
They can do so by telephoning 999/911, (784) 457-1211, (784) 458-6229 or (784) 456-1810.
This story is so sad. My deepest heartfelt condolences to the families of the bereaved. I can’t help seeing the abject poverty people live in and getting angry cause I know it can be better in our country.