An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The two fam­i­lies left home­less af­ter a fire that claimed the life of a pen­sion­er on Pic­ton Road, Laven­tille, on Wednes­day, will be housed in tem­po­rary ac­com­mo­da­tions for the fore­see­able fu­ture.

The Cabr­era and Pay­i­son fam­i­lies were re­lo­cat­ed to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) de­vel­op­ment at Trou Macaque, Laven­tille, hours af­ter the blaze de­stroyed their shared apart­ment build­ing.

Ver­na Rigault, 61, died in the fire, which be­gan around 11.30 am. Her body was dis­cov­ered in the bath­room of the gut­ted house af­ter fire of­fi­cers ex­tin­guished the blaze.

Rigault was a moth­er of five.

Re­spond­ing al­most im­me­di­ate­ly to an ap­peal by Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle for tem­po­rary hous­ing for the dis­placed fam­i­lies, Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee said the HDC act­ed swift­ly to as­sist those in dis­tress.

“This is not a mat­ter of pol­i­tics, but one re­quir­ing sym­pa­thy and un­der­stand­ing,” Lee said.

The min­is­ter said he could not spec­i­fy how long the fam­i­lies would re­main at Trou Macaque, de­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as “flu­id,” but con­firmed that oth­er min­istries were al­so pro­vid­ing as­sis­tance.

Lee added that the two-bed­room apart­ment units as­signed to the fam­i­lies had been il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­pied when they ar­rived on Wednes­day, hours af­ter the fire.

“That had been sort­ed out, and the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies were moved in,” he as­sured.