As Hurricane Beryl pummelled the island with heavy rain and wind Wednesday afternoon, residents of a tenement on Harris Street in Rose Town, St Andrew, suffered a double tragedy that left them homeless and devastated.

Water from an overflowing gully behind the property had forced most of the families
— at least 13 of whom are children
— to flee their small houses. However, in the darkness of night the smell of smoke alerted one resident, who had decided to brave the flood waters, to the frightening reality that there was a fire on the property.

A Jamaica Observer source said there were reports of gunfire in the area before the fire, leading to suspicion that the blaze was the work of arsonists. While there was no immediate confirmation from the police or firefighters that the blaze was deliberately set, the Observer noticed that there was no electricity connection to the property.

At the time the Observer visited the scene, three police units were there. The newspaper learnt that three fire units had responded to the blaze that destroyed the houses.

“I lost everything,” one mother, who opted not to be named, told the Observer.

“I came over here to live after being burnt out last October over there,” she said, pointing to a charred house shrouded in heavy foliage on an adjacent property.

“I wasn’t here when it happened. The water from the gully flood us out. It came up this high,” she said, showing the Observer the waist-high water mark on the wall of her house.

Another resident, Dave Wedderburn, said he, too, lost all his possessions. All he had left were the clothes in which he was clad.

Shakera Mullings, a mother of three girls and a boy, was a picture of grief. Tears flowed down her face as she related her experience of being among the fire victims from the adjacent property last October.

“When rain fall we flood out and now another fire,” she said, her voice soft but heavy with frustration.

She, too, had fled the tenement when the flood waters entered her house.

“I lost everything,” she said.

Mullings is hoping that the local authorities, who she said had helped them after last October’s fire, will assist again.