I woke up at 3:00 AM again last night, but it wasn’t the heat. It was the silence. In Roseau, silence doesn’t feel like peace anymore; it feels like the breath the city takes right before it screams. I went to my window, looking toward Great Marlborough Street, half-expecting to see that sick, orange glow eating away at another piece of my childhood.
My name doesn’t matter, but my memories do. I am a child of this capital. I remember when these buildings weren’t historical sites or commercial risks; they were home. They were where we bought our school shoes, where we whispered secrets in the shade of overhanging balconies, where the wood felt solid and eternal.
The latest fire once again ripped through a section of the capital, destroying businesses and damaging structures packed closely together in one of the country’s busiest commercial areas. Before the smoke from that incident could fully settle in the public mind, people were already recalling the fires near Old Street, King George V Street, and other commercial zones that suffered similar devastation not long ago.
At some point, the country has to stop treating these incidents as isolated bad luck and begin asking whether Roseau is facing a broader structural problem.
How is this happening? How is it that we survived the 200mph winds of Maria, we survived the floods, we survived the total darkness of 2017, only to be turned to ash in 2026? It feels like there is a curse on these streets. Every time I see the blackened shell of a store or an office, a little bit of my own history vanishes. They tell us “Roseau is rising,” but all I see is Roseau burning.
The Boogeyman in the Shadows: Is it Arson?
I hear the whispers in the market. People are using a word I hate: Arson. They say there’s someone out there, a shadow with a box of matches, walking through the narrow alleys while we sleep. Is there really a serial arsonist? The thought makes my skin crawl. Why would someone want to kill a city?
If it’s an arsonist, what is the motive? Is it a sick kind of thrill? To watch the fire trucks struggle through our tiny, congested streets? Or is it something more calculated? When the French Connection building went up, when Joshua Francis’s office was gutted, it felt… targeted. But then you look at the small shops, the gyms, the pharmacies, what did they ever do to anyone?
If a person is doing this, they aren’t just burning wood; they are burning our peace of mind. We are looking at our neighbours with suspicion now. Every person walking late at night is a suspect. That is the true tragedy. The fire isn’t just outside; it’s starting to burn the trust we have for each other. But then I stop and think, maybe I’m just watching too many movies. Maybe there is no monster. Maybe the monster is just us, or the things we’ve neglected.
The Cynicism of the Insurance Fire
Then there’s the other talk. The ugly talk. You hear it on the blocks, on the bus-ride, in shops and on the in goverment offices. “Oh, they just wanted the insurance money.” It makes me want to cry. How can we be so cruel? To suggest that a businessman would burn down his own livelihood, his own legacy, just for a payout?
But then, I look at the state of the world. Everything is so expensive now. To fix an old wooden building in Roseau costs more than the building is worth. The insurance premiums are sky-high, the maintenance is a nightmare, and the economy… well, we all know how the economy is. Is it possible? Could someone be that desperate? It’s a confusing thought because it requires me to believe that people I’ve known for years are capable of such destruction.
Yet, I look at some of these buildings that have been sitting empty or rotting since Maria, and I wonder. But then I see a place like Jolly’s Pharmacy. Why would anyone burn that? It was the heart of our healthcare. It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. My head spins trying to figure out who gains from a pile of ash.
The Ghosts of Maria: Our Rotting Veins
Maybe it’s not a person at all. Maybe it’s just the rot. After Hurricane Maria, we were all so desperate for light. We hooked things up fast. We used whatever wires we could find. We patched things together because we had to survive.
But Roseau is old. Her veins, those electrical wires hidden behind the mahogany and the cedar, are tired. I think about my own house. The wires are brittle. They’ve been through heat, salt air, and storms. Is it just poor electrical work? Are we living in a giant tinderbox simply because we can’t afford to rewire our history?
We keep adding more. More air conditioners because the world is getting hotter. More computers, more fridges, more everything. We are asking 1950s wiring to do 2026 work. It’s like asking an old woman in her 90s to hike to the Boiling Lake. Eventually, her heart is going to give out. Is that all this is? A series of heart attacks? It’s a terrifying thought because it means any building could be next. My building could be next.
The New Power: A Gift or a Curse?
This is the part that confuses me the most. Everyone is talking about geothermal energy. Green energy, they say. The future of Dominica. We’ve seen the big pipes, the new substation at Laudat, the massive transmission lines cutting through the trees (well its more underground). We were told it would bring us cheaper power and a stable grid.
But then April came. The whole island went dark because of a technical issue at the geothermal power plant. And now, people are saying that when they switch from the old DOMLEC generators to the new lines, there are surges.
I’m not a scientist. I don’t understand kilovolts or load balancing. But I do understand that when you push a lot of water through a small, old pipe, the pipe bursts. Is that what’s happening to Roseau? Is this new, powerful geothermal energy too much for our old buildings to handle? Is the switch causing an overload that our ancient breakers can’t stop?
It’s so ironic it makes me want to scream. We are trying to save the planet with green energy, but are we burning down our capital to do it? Why wasn’t the city ready? If the transmission lines are new and powerful, but the buildings are old and weak, wasn’t this bound to happen? I feel like we are being used as a laboratory, and the experiment is going up in flames. It’s hard to be proud of progress when you have to smell it burning every other week.
The Poison of Politics
And then, because this is Dominica, everything becomes a fight. I open my phone and I see the blue and the red fighting over the ashes. One side says it’s sabotage to make the government look bad. The other side says the government is neglecting the fire service and the building codes.
It’s so tiring. Can’t we just mourn? Can’t we just find the truth without it being a campaign slogan? When a building burns, it doesn’t ask who you voted for. The smoke doesn’t care about your party colors.
Is it politically motivated? I don’t want to believe that. I don’t want to believe that anyone in this beautiful country would burn a building to win an argument. But the accusations are so loud that they drown out the fire sirens. It adds to the confusion. Is it a match? Is it a wire? Is it a surge? Or is it a political statement?
A Plea for the Soul of Roseau
I walked past the ruins of the Great Marlborough Street fire yesterday. I stood there for a long time. I saw a piece of a charred sign from a business that had been there since whenever. I felt a deep, hollow ache in my chest.
We are losing our sense of place. Roseau is becoming a city of gaps. A toothless smile of blackened stone and empty lots. If we don’t find the answer, the real answer, what will be left by Christmas?
I am confused, yes. I am emotional, yes. Because I love this city. I loved the way the bells of the Cathedral sound in the evening. I love the bustle of the Bayfront. But I am scared to love it too much, because it might be gone tomorrow.
We need help. We don’t just need water to put out the fires; we need the truth to put out the rumours. We need experts who can tell us if it’s the geothermal testing, or the old wires, or a man with a grudge. We need to know so we can stop jumping at every loud noise in the night.
Until then, I’ll keep my bag packed by the door. I’ll keep checking my outlets until my fingers are sore. And I’ll keep praying that tonight, the only thing that glows in Roseau is the moon.
Please, someone. Tell us why our home is turning to ash. I just want to understand. I just want to sleep without smelling smoke in my dreams.
This article is copyright © 2026 DOM767
