– ‘No safe zones for children during fire,’ Min Lawrence

By Derwayne Wills

THE Social Protection Ministry has not only taken full responsibility for the Friday morning fire at the Drop-In Centre which killed two boys, ages 2 and 6, but will cover the family’s psycho-social support and funeral arrangements for the boys. Details on what occurred at the Hadfield Street Centre are still emerging, but subject Minister Volda Lawrence opined that more could have been done to ensure the safety of the children against fires at the home.
Some 31 children were housed in the recently renovated Hadfield Street complex under the control of Lawrence’s ministry.
Joshua and Antonio George were placed in the home on Wednesday, following reports of child maltreatment at their Norton and Chapel Streets, Georgetown, residence.
Two of the ministry’s social services assistants attached to the Hadfield Street complex gave accounts of what transpired Friday morning at a press conference yesterday afternoon.
Ministry officials said it is not normal for two staffers alone to be stationed at the centre and that this would have to be investigated. Social Protection Minister Volda Lawrence and head of the Childcare and Protection Agency (CPA), Ann Greene, were present at that press conference.
Sharon Jones, one of the centre’s social service assistants, was in charge of the 18 girls stationed on the top floor of the two-storey wooden and concrete Hadfield Street complex.
Jones recalled hearing an electrical disturbance at about five minutes after midnight on Friday morning. After inquiring, she noticed “blue flames running up the wall.”
Jones said she panicked and grabbed a small child who was just behind her. She said she called out to Rupert Hinds, the other social services assistant who was stationed on the ground floor of the complex with 13 boys in his care.
Jones then proceeded to wake up the other girls on the floor. The girls started panicking, screaming and latching on to her clothing. Jones said after opening the upstairs door for the girls, she gave the keys to one of the girls and instructed her to open the door at the bottom of the step leading outside the complex.
“I had a baby and I had to put her down. Then I remembered I had not picked her up back,” Jones recounted.
As the blaze continued to grow, Jones said she managed to search for the baby until that baby was located. She subsequently came into contact with two-year-old Antonio, now deceased.
“He running coming from the other end screaming. He’s crying coming to me. So I had to just barely now duck underneath a bed because I realised that flames started to come down from the room,” Jones added.
Jones said she had both the baby and Antonio in her hand. She then proceeded down the stairs where she met Hinds and another child coming up the stairwell with a fire extinguisher in hand.
By the time Jones reached the front door to head out into the yard and onto the road, she realised she was no longer holding young Antonio’s hand. She proceeded with the baby in her hand onto Hadfield Street.
Rupert Hinds, in his account at yesterday’s press conference, was stationed on the lower flat of the building, while renovations were being done in the boys’ dormitory on the top floor.
Hinds said his first alert was the sound of the girls screaming. Hinds did not call 912 immediately, but instead sought to evacuate the boys on his flat.
He recalled opening the door to let them out, then proceeded onto the second floor armed with a fire extinguisher. His attempts to fight the fire himself proved futile. It was then he recalled making an effort to call the Fire Department. His call went unanswered.
As he watched the blaze from Hadfield Street, Hinds was convinced that all the children had been evacuated. When the Fire Department arrived, Hinds was informed by his colleague that two boys are still upstairs in the building.
“We tried to get them but could not have gotten into the building because the entire building was engulfed in flames.”
The Child Care Agency’s head, Ann Greene, pledged the full support of her agency to work with the surviving three siblings and the family, even as investigations continue into the allegations of neglect and abuse at the Norton and Chapel Streets homes of these children.
Following the fire, the other 29 children of the Drop-In Centre are stationed at the Sophia Centre and the Halfway Home. Those children are currently receiving therapy from specialists at the Georgetown Public Hospital.
When asked whether there were protocols in place at the centre in the event of a fire, Greene responded in the affirmative.
She said there were fire drills up to last year, and confirmed the Fire Department had encouraged the installation of a number of fire-fighting equipment including extinguishers and fire-proof blankets.
Greene also said her staff were adequately trained in fire evacuations but that circumstances prevented the effective execution of things learned in training.
“You might have training, but if you panic, you might get carried away and forget all the things you have to do,” the CPA head said.
Greene’s position however conflicted with that of Social Protection Minister Lawrence. Lawrence said she had conversations with staff at the Centre, where the need for a fire drill was discussed.
“I spoke with the staff and one of the things we were doing was a fire drill. An actual fire drill in place.”
Lawrence admitted that in the event of a fire, there was no safe space for the children to be evacuated to. “This morning when I got there, I realised there was no space for these children to evacuate.”
This is not the first fire at the Centre. There was another in 2010, but no fatalities. Although the fire investigation is still ongoing, Jones’s report yesterday suggests that the fire was electrical in origin.
Asked how frequently electrical assessments are done at the building, Greene said those are done by a ministry official who assesses what needs to be done in the building and makes reports.
Greene says she has never received any reports of electrical problems.
Minister Lawrence, on the other hand, said she feels it is a “deficiency in the government system” that regular electrical assessments are not done at government agencies.
“I am working in the ministry; I never saw anyone come and inspect my office. That’s a deficiency that now we have to correct.”
Lawrence said her ministry’s staff are now looking at what could be done at other homes under the ministry’s control to ensure this sort of thing does not re-occur.
There was one report from an eyewitness at the scene of the fire who said that two-year-old Antonio ran back into the building in search of his six-year-old brother Joshua, but that the stairs collapsed preventing anyone from rescuing the two boys who were presumably trapped upstairs.
Ministry officials have since denied this, saying they await the official report from the Fire Department. Antonio and Joshua’s mother and father are 37 years and 51 years, respectively, ministry officials said.
The bodies of Joshua and Antonio George are at the Georgetown Public Hospital awaiting post-mortems.