RACE COURSE, Clarendon — Collin Walters struggled to accept that his two granddaughters, mere toddlers, had died inside what was supposed to be a safe place — their house in Race Course, Clarendon.

The fact that he lives next door has only made his grief worse.

“Mi feel it; to God, mi feel it,” Walters cried. He was among family members whose lives were shattered Thursday morning when four-year-old Abigail and her three-year-old sister Kayla Tomlinson burned to death. The girls’ father, Owen Tomlinson, enveloped by grief, battled his emotions to find words.

“Mi deh a work on the site and mi see a big smoke in the air. When mi run come, everything over. Only thing mi see a di house on fire. We start throwing water fi try rescue dem, but the two of them burn up inna the house,” he said, adding that his seven-year-old daughter was at school at the time.

According to Dennis Lyon, deputy superintendent of the fire brigade’s Clarendon Division, they were alerted to the house fire at 11:04 am.

“On arrival, a one-apartment dwelling house constructed with concrete and zinc roof was engulfed in flames. During the cooling down operation the burnt remains of the two children were found,” said Lyon.

Walters said the flames were just too much for those attempting to get the children out of the house.

“I was inside laying down and I heard my neighbours bawling out, ‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’ And when I run out I see mi daughter house on fire. We don’t know what cause the fire,” Walters said.

He said his daughter, who had left the children at home to take a meal to their father who had been working on a construction site nearby, fell to the ground on seeing the blaze. Her shouted questions about the fate of her children spurred him into action.

“Is that time I run to the house, but I couldn’t go inside ’cause the fire more than me. And then the crowd came and we throw water and we out it, and then the fire brigade came,” Walters said.

It is said that the toddlers were kept home from school as one of them was unwell.

“Mi feel it bad… and now everything burn up. Nutten nuh left fi dem,” Walters said.

Tomlinson, who said he had done his best over the years to give his children a decent life, is worried about how their mother will cope with their death.

“It done happen already and mi can’t do nothing… Right now dem mother drop down and mi nuh know how she a go manage. She had a rough pregnancy with the last one so mi know seh she taking it rough,” he said, his grief evident.