Eight-year-old Shamar Williams (right) and Trave Chung, 12, look on the rubble which used to be their homes before a fire left nine families homeless in Board Villa, off Slipe Pen Road in Kingston on Tuesday night. - Norman Grindley/Chief Photographer

Thirteen-year-old Convent of Mercy (Alpha Academy) student Jodi-Ann Brown missed school yesterday. She will also miss school today and could be missing tomorrow - 48 hours before her end-of-year examinations begin.

But Jodi-Ann has no option after her uniforms and books were destroyed in a fire which razed her house at 31 Slipe Pen Road, better known as 'Board Villa', in Kingston on Tuesday night.

Jodi-Ann will be joined by a number of other children who lost their clothes and books in the blaze, which destroyed nine houses and left approximately 40 persons homeless.

Awakened by fire

"I was sleeping when my mother wake me up and seh mi must come out because the house on fire. She tell mi to take up the baby but mi panic and drop the baby and mi sister take him up and we run outside," Jodi-Ann told The Gleaner, as she pointed to the rubble of what was left of her family's house.

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