ST ANN’S BAY, St Ann — Fire Wednesday night swept through a one-apartment board house at Gordon Penant Road in St Ann’s Bay, killing three children who the police said were left in the care of their father.

However, the children:

* Yakene Moses, six;

* Shinelle Moses, four; and

* Lenworth Moses Jr, two years and 10 months old, were at home alone at the time of the fire. The door was padlocked.

The three children were burnt to a crisp and their charred remains were found crouched behind the single door to the apartment, suggesting they were trying to escape the blaze.

Firemen said a rubber sealing used to prevent leakage caused the fire to spread rapidly.

The police said the children’s mother, Erica Blake, a 35 year-old bartender, left for work in Runaway Bay Wednesday morning, leaving the children in the care of their father, Lenworth Moses Snr.

Sometime during the course of Wednesday night, according to the police, the father reportedly locked the children in the house and went away. At about 9:55 pm residents saw fire coming from the building and summoned the fire department; but by the time they arrived the house was destroyed.

The children’s father, who was spotted in the area yesterday morning, fled the area after residents tried to apprehend him. He was yesterday being sought by the police.

Meanwhile, a distraught Grant, who was prevented from visiting the scene Wednesday night and had to be taken by the police to the St Ann’s Bay Hospital for treatment for shock, wailed uncontrollably yesterday when she saw for the first time the charred remains of what was once her dwelling.

A burnt-out stove and gas cylinder, the charred mattress spring of the bed she once shared with her kids, pieces of blackened clothing and other burnt items, told the grim tale.

“I went to work about 9:30 in the morning and about after 10:00 last night I got the news that me house burn down and all my three kids die,” Grant told the Observer.

She said she had left the children in the care of their father, Lenworth Moses Snr.

Grant speculated that an electrical short circuit may have started the fire, but for neighbours who stood by helplessly as the fire raged, it was a horrifying experience.

“I saw the fire ’bout 9:30. From me come down here the whole place on fire; me just hit off the door, but me couldn’t get fe go in there. So me just haffi leave it like that,” said a neighbour, Courtney Thompson, who lives nearby, and who was first on the scene.

“Me try save them but couldn’t save them. The house was padlocked from outside so the youth them couldn’t come out; maybe them did a try fe come out and couldn’t come out. Dem just suffocate in there and just die,” he added.

Another neighbour, “Rambo,” who lives below the burnt house on the sloping terrain, said he was alerted to the fire by someone pounding on his door, shouting “fire!”

He said persons on the scene knew the children were inside the house, but the magnitude of the fire made their efforts to rescue them futile.