3 children perish in Independence Day fire at Mocha

…single mother was at work

By Shane Marks

Calamity masked the joyful, patriotic Independence Day celebrations for the villagers of 10 Field, Barnwell, Mocha, on the East Bank of Demerara (EBD), after they were forced to watch haplessly as a raging fire gorged the lives of three young children.

Bemoaning the loss is 23-year-old Tracy Flue, who was pulling a graveyard shift at her security job to make ends meet for her family when she received what has hitherto turned out to be the most traumatic news she would ever hear in her life – her house is on fire, with her three children trapped inside.
The fire, according to Police reports, started in a wooden house at around 01:25h. Flue’s three children, who at the time were in bed sleeping, became entrapped in the burning house.
Brothers, eight-year-old Timothy and six-year-old Trayshon Kippins, and sister, one-year-old Zhlia Flue, each took their final breaths before perishing in the inferno.

Villagers conveyed to Guyana Times that they looked on helplessly as the house burned to ashes with the children inside, since there was nothing they could have done to save the children.
Reports are that the Guyana Fire Service (GFS) was alerted to the fire immediately after it started, and fire tenders from the Diamond and West Ruimveldt Stations were dispatched to the scene, but took some time to arrive there as a result of the deteriorating roadway at Barnwell.
Fire Chief (ag.) Gregory Wickham has confirmed that the firefighters were forced to go to the burning house on foot. Wickham explained, “They had to walk quite a few metres in order to get to the scene, because the terrain could not afford them to drive.”

A resident, Rozanne Allen, stated that it took the firefighters approximately 45 minutes to arrive on the scene, only to find the charred remains of three young children.
“The Fire reel come and stop up to a point, where they couldn’t come in fuh save these children. Over twenty-five years we asking for this road fuh do. They [the Government] say in here is farmlands, so Government don’t do farmland roads. If they [the Government] do that main road, them children wouldn’t have dead. I was here.”

Despite their efforts, the Fire Service was too late, as the children, trapped alone in the burning house, succumbed to the blazing heat assailing their small bodies.
“Right now, it’s a very tragic moment,” were sentiments of community member Ellen Borne, who, like many other residents in the area, came out to witness the saddening aftermath in daylight.
But the soul-crushing event leaves many villagers to wonder how exactly did the fire start, and whether the children were asleep at the time.
It is being speculated that an acquaintance of Flue’s might have lit the home after threatening to do so several times during domestic disputes with Flue.
Flue has related to sections of the media that she had made countless reports to the Police against this person, who, many times before, had threatened to kill her and burn her house down.
Due to this person’s continuous threats, the woman has been granted a restraining order, which she claims has been violated on many occasions. Flue and this person were due for a court hearing at the end of this month.
She told reporters, “I was in a relationship with an abusive boyfriend. I go to the station countless times to make reports. This month is supposed to be we court day, and he tell me that how anytime I go to court, it gon be the last day I ever see the Police, and how he gon kill me. And nuff nights I used to be running, cause he used to be want putting knife to me, running me with cutlass.
“Last night he call me and I refuse to answer the phone… He threatened me nuff time that he gone burn down me house,” Flue cried.
But, a report on the cause of the fire has revealed that the fire was electrical in nature.
While the smoke was still going where Flue’s children had parted, Flue sat in the house next door and cried. Her screams, of a heartbreaking reality she didn’t predict, reminded the 10 Field, Barnwell community of her loss.
Receiving word of Flue’s tragedy, President Dr. Irfaan Ali met with a distraught Flue and her family in the afternoon hours of Thursday at the Police Sports Club Ground, Eve Leary. The Head of State was accompanied by Prime Minister Mark Phillips; Minister of Tourism, Industry, and Commerce, Oneidge Walrond; Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn; Commissioner of Police, Clifton Hicken; and other Government officials and members of the Force.
Meanwhile, two months ago, a four-year-old was then the latest child to have died in a fire. The young boy died after a fire destroyed a Tucville Squatting Area, Georgetown home. That child had been identified only as Jemel.