Community rallies to help victims

Above all else, thanks must be given that no one was killed or seriously hurt in an incident which has left many traumatised families facing a very difficult period in the weeks ahead, but still alive and still together.

The episode has also served to provide a demonstration of Jersey’s community spirit in action. As well as the emergency services, both professional and honorary, which reacted so swiftly and effectively to the immediate crisis, a host of other organisations and individuals have begun to play their part in the process of recovery.

The urgent need is to provide families who have lost everything with food, clothing, shelter and the other everyday necessities of life. With that and other longer-term rehabilitation in mind, there is no doubt that Islanders will rally to ensure that the emergency appeal set up at St Peter’s Parish Hall is generously supported.

Beyond the provision of immediate needs lies the question of how and where the Broadlands families are to be accommodated. Housing Minister Terry Le Main and his staff will no doubt meet that challenge with relative ease in the short term, but as the dust quite literally settles on the Broadlands drama, Jersey as a whole will come face to face with some uncomfortable questions which it is perhaps too easy to ignore in the normal course of events.

How many residents were living there, in what conditions and in what circumstances? Assuming that their situation was fully legal, do we still want to consider ourselves the kind of community in which families with children can find themselves living at such close quarters with so many others?

As today’s dramatic pictures of the fire’s aftermath, with their frightening testimony to its power and extent, make only too clear, this episode had the potential to turn into a major tragedy.

It will be of relatively little immediate consolation to the families concerned, but the closeness of that brush will surely focus political attention on the Island’s lodging house rules and the question of whether they remain satisfactory by modern standards.