HILARY HOSIA
What began as a normal Saturday morning for a Delap family of five turned into a living nightmare after their home caught fire.
The couple and their two children, a three-year old girl and a five-year-old boy, were watching movies in the bedroom around 10 in the morning when neighbors banged on their door and alerted them of the brewing fire in the adjacent room.
“We were completely unaware of the fire,” mother of the family Biram George told the Journal. She said the fire started in the room adjacent to theirs.
“We used the room for storage,” Biram said of the room where the fire originated. The grandfather was in the living room across the way from the storage when the fire started.
The fire swept through the entire house and left a hole in the middle of the trailer home.
Biram said authorities did some kind of damage report after the fire and have yet to visit since the weekend.
“We literally have nothing left,” Biram told the Journal. “We left with what we were wearing that day,” she said. “We are literally wearing borrowed clothes.”
The family had been relocated to a nearby house that is half-built and looks like it’s still under construction.
The house is located in the Delap backroad behind K&K Supermarket across from Aihua Store. The family are now staying in a temporary home in the same area.
The family were planning to enroll their older child in school but had to delay due to their unforeseen financial restraints.
The only worker in the household works at a warehouse/retail store in Delap.
The family is unaware of where or who to seek assistance. The Marshall Islands Red Cross Society was alerted Monday.