The Tribune

By JADE RUSSELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

jrussell@tribunemedia.net

A MOTHER of six is desperate after a fire ripped apart a shanty town on Monday, destroying the place she called home for more than a decade.

Juliane Olibrice told The Tribune she was one of the several people coping in the aftermath of a fire in a shanty town off Joe Farrington Road.

As the rain poured down her face, she said: “I’m working, but like, the little money I making can’t buy everything back. My children, where we sleeping, it’s raining now, and water leaking inside.”

Ms Olibrice highlighted an unfinished building where she sought refuge to shelter her one-year-old baby and other children after the fire. The structure was among several dilapidated buildings flooded with water from the rain, full of burnt clothes and rubble.

 “Somebody gave me a blue tent to put on the roof, so I put it on the roof for the water,” she said. “Because with them children, I have a baby that’s one-year-old so she can’t get wet in the rain. If she wet in the rain, she gon’ get sick. So we trying the best, and people trying they best to help us.”

 The shanty town was filled with children playing and roaming in the yard when The Tribune arrived, despite the precarious situation some now face.

 Asked if she and her children had eaten food recently, Ms Olibrice said: “People give my children. I don’t mind if I don’t eat if my children eat. I don’t mind that. I want people give them food. I let them eat.”

 Outside the shanty town, there were stalls under which several women sold hot food and drinks to residents. Ms Olibrice said the vendors give a plate of food to children if they saw them hungry.

 She said she works at Wendy’s, but her uniform and her children’s school uniforms were destroyed in the fire.

 “I ain’t going to work this week because my uniform burn and I ain’t get no money to buy it yet,” she said.

 Another resident, Junina Ougutisin, who spoke Creole that a Tribune employee translated, described the fire as “shocking”. She said she has high blood pressure and that the incident took a physical toll on her.

 Despite losing all her belongings, Ms Ougutisin said she and her son stayed with a neighbour who lives not too far from the shanty town.

 She said the fire deprived them of comfort. She said sleeping had been difficult, and finding clothing had been rough.

 Ms Ougutisin said her greatest worry is getting her son ready for school in September.

 Meanwhile, a single father of one said he had just buried the mother of his child last year and is now facing a tragedy of a different kind. He said he slept on the ground on recent nights and borrowed clothes and a blanket to cover his son.

 The shanty town residents said the property’s landlord did not offer assistance after the fire, noting they still have to find rent money this week. Ms Olibrice, the mother of six, said residents must rebuild their destroyed structures to survive.