A Gasparillo gardener returned home on Sunday night to meet his home in rubbles after it was destroyed by a wild fire.
Hardeo Ramsumair, 44, of Lightbourne Road, Bonne Aventure, was spending the day with his brother in Toco when his neighbour phoned him around 6 pm to say that his house was on fire.
But with several gas-powered pieces of equipment in his wooden home, the neighbour said, it took just ten minutes to reduce Ramsumair’s house to rubble.
As he rummaged through the ruins yesterday, the water pump, generator and weed whacker he used to cultivate his small plantation were all destroyed. Even his plants were gone.
“By the time I came back here around 10 o’clock last night, the house was already burnt. When we spoke to the fire officers, they said they could not save anything,” Ramsumair said.
“They said by the time they came, it was already burnt. A bush fire from on top the hill came down and here has real breeze. When it was lit, all the bamboo started to fall on top the house and it started to burn,” he added.
While bush fires are common in the hills of Gasparillo, he said there was none near his home in the last four years and when he left home on Sunday morning, there was no blaze.
The neighbour said the fire started after noon and spread quickly. With nothing to salvage, the self-employed gardener said he does not know how he will recover with over $50,000 in losses.
Asked about his next step to rebuild, he said: “That is what I don’t know right now. As you can see I have nothing to start back with really. All my tanks, barrel, everything is gone.”
Luckily for Ramsumair, he did not tie his three-year-old pothound Brownie who ran to a neighbour’s home when the fire broke out and returned yesterday morning.
He said he and Brownie would now have to look for a new home.