KINGSTON – June consistently has not been a good month for residents of 15 Omara Road in St Andrew.In the past decade they’ve been struck by three fires – all in the month of June – leaving them to believe the sixth month is somehow jinxed.“My house burn down June 4, and the one that killed the twin dem was June 10. Now today is the last day of June and look wha happen. It [the month] couldn’t just pass and gwaan?” asked a female resident last Wednesday. She had just come home, and pushed through the crowd gathered in the narrow lane to find her friend Dawn Brown whose four-family wooden house had just burnt flat. Last Wednesday’s mid-afternoon blaze left Brown and her boyfriend; her uncle and his family; her sister and two children; as well as another sister, without a home. There were no casualties except for Smith’s Rottweiler, “Earthquake”, which was chained inside his kennel at the time.The previous two fires, according to residents, were June 4, 2001 and June 10, 1997. Five houses were gutted in the first incident and twin babies perished in the second. The fire department was unable to say what caused last week’s blaze, but Brown’s uncle, Irvin Wilson, who was the sole person home at the time, said it seemed to have started at the back of the house.“I was outside and saw the smoke but by time I go inside fi try tek out mi fan and some of di tings, the smoke tek me over and mi haffi run out,” Wilson said. Nothing was saved and the property was not insured. Except for minor damage to the roofs, the houses on either side of Brown’s and Wilson’s – both concrete structures – were spared. “Is the second time now we almost lose we house,” said another resident. “It’s a good thing the people in the community always helpful and had started to take out some of the things,” she said, in direct reference to the 2001 fire which burned on the other side of the lane.
(Jamaica Observer)
