A FARM worker died after enduring a “vicious cycle” of excess cold in his accommodation which had been ruled “unfit for human habitation”, an environmental health officer has told an inquest.
George Michael Monte De Ramos Castrudes (37) had to ask his employer for “thicker bedding” due to struggles heating his work lodgings with just one portable heater, it was said.
A Jersey Fire and Rescue investigation report found that his temporary cabin at La Valette Nurseries in Grouville contained “insufficient heating to keep the unit warm”.
It further stated that tenants of the property were liable to the “category two hazard” of extreme cold.
On January 19 2025 – the night Mr Castrudes decided to install an “improvised” fire-pit inside his kitchen – it was deemed highly unlikely that the accommodation would have been a “habitable temperature”.
The second day of an ongoing inquest held at Morier House examined the condition of the La Valette accommodation and its contribution to the cause of the fire and its spread.
In a written statement, Mr Castrudes’ former co-worker Adrian Aquino said the two men had shared a bedroom together in the employer-provided cabin from their first meeting in July 2021.
Mr Aquino said that Mr Castrudes would send money back to support “his two families” in the Philippines. The electricity bill was shared between them and paid in cash at quarterly intervals to their landlords and employers, the Blake family, he added.
He described a “single freestanding heater” in the cabin as “not really enough for the two of us”.
“We asked the farmer for thicker bedding and he told us we would need to purchase this ourselves from car boots sales or shops.
“Sometimes we had to sleep with winter coats on to get warm”, Mr Aquino said.
Mr Castrudes was referred to as “quite impulsive”, he said, adding: “On one occasion I woke up, I couldn’t find George.
“Later I found out he’d told his wife he was taking his bedding to go and sleep in the greenhouse because it was warmer in there.”
He added that Mr Castrudes also spent money on “cans of beer” and cigarettes, and previously used the washing machine drum as a fire-pit during a New Year’s Eve celebration with friends.
“I am not sure what George was thinking about bringing the drum into the cabin,” Mr Aquino said. “I can only guess he was cold and worried about using the electricity.”
Giving evidence from the Philippines via remote link, Mr Aquino said he now lives in “much better” accommodation under the same employers at their Three Oaks Farm in St Saviour.
He clarified that the landlord and farm owner Nigel Blake “strictly said” to only use the improvised fire-pit “outside” and not near either the farm glasshouses or work lodgings.
Mr Aquino also said the two men were offered a “bigger heater” by Mr Blake, but “George refused” because he was “concerned” about electricity costs.
The inquest heard him say that Mr Blake “sometimes gave us some extra blankets”, and would tell the pair to use their heater when it was cold. But the farmworker repeated that worries about the bills meant they couldn’t heed his advice.
One one occasion, he said, Mr Castrudes resorted to pulling the socket out of their heater at 3am because it was using up too much electricity.
He also mentioned that, on one occasion, he had seen his co-worker pull out the batteries of the smoke alarm because he was “annoyed” at it going off as he cooked in the kitchen.
The light on the smoke alarm – he insisted – was visible to him less than a week before the fire on Sunday 19 January.
In a witness statement, chartered environmental health officer Robert Cragg described Mr Aquino and Mr Castrudes’ cabin as “unfit for human habitation”.
A Jersey Fire and Rescue investigation report, he said, suggested “insufficient heating to keep the unit warm with only one small convection heater in the bedroom and a wall-mounted fan heater in the bathroom”.
“[This makes] it impossible to heat the property in a cost-efficient manner, which has been further compounded by the departure of the other occupant leaving Mr Castrudes solely responsible for costs.”
The 37-year-old was caught up in a “vicious cycle”, he said, adding: “The heating in the property was insufficient to adequately heat the property; [and] the ability for the property to retain temperature to be cost effective then adds to barrier for the property to be heated.
“In this instance it appears to have led to a behavioural decision by Mr Castrudes to utilise another form heating, which ultimately resulted in this incident.
“With a minimum external temperature that evening of 0.3 degrees – without sufficient heating – it is highly unlikely the portacabin would be considered a habitable temperature.”
The smoke detector was found “not to be operational”, he said, a breach of the “minimum standard of landlords to ensure the alarm system is operational”.
But the inquest heard that due to a “transitional provision” written into the Rented Dwelling Licensing Scheme of April 2024, no “criminal liability” can be attributed to the Blake family as landlords.
“As the licence was issued within the transitional period of legislation, no non-compliance with standard or conditions would result in liability for the landlord under public health and safety legislation”, he explained.
Advocate George Pearce, representing the Nurseries, pointed out that on Mr Aquino’s evidence Mr Castrudes has “tampered” with the smoke alarm,
Mr Cragg agreed that it “wouldn’t be unreasonable” to expect the tenant to test his own alarms in the case of tampering, but reiterated that it was ultimately the landlord’s responsibility.
During his evidence, Paul Blake confirmed to Mr Berry that the property had received a “satisfactory” rating in an electrical installation condition report issued on 16 May 2024.
But he was directed to page nine of the report, which stated that the “smoke detector required a ten-year sealed battery”.
His brother Nigel explained in his evidence that the cabin was installed as accommodation on the farm grounds between 1999 and 2000.
“Did you ever check the fire alarm in George’s cabin?”, asked Mr Berry.
“The only time was when they moved in, I put it in – that would have been May 2021 or June 2021”, he said.
Asked if he’d heard his two employees complain about low temperatures in the portacabin, he replied: “I suppose they did, yeah, that’s why I gave them some blankets.”
He said this happened “just the one time”, and on other occasions he referred them to a “car boot sale down in Gorey” which the two men used to frequent “quite often”.
Nigel Blake said he “warned” his employee in December 2023 “not to use the fire-pit” near the work lodgings or his glasshouses.
“I was not aware that Mr Castrudes had used the fire-pit inside this accommodation: if I had been aware I would have forbidden doing it”, he added.
The inquest heard him say that he worked a shift alongside George in one of the glasshouses on Friday 17 January, two days before the fire.
“Did he say anything about being cold or issues with the cold at that time, or money?”, he was asked.
“No, not really, no, not that I know of – he was just being his happy self”, he replied.
Detective Constable Paul Lovesey, from the Jersey Financial Crime Unit, provided the inquest with a breakdown of Mr Castrudes’ expenditures and salary payments from 2021 to 2025.
It was heard that he received £15,986.14 in wages in 2024, with a total expenditure of £15,814.99.
DC Lovesey noted that Mr Castrudes was “not paying income tax until September 2024” and was in “tax arrears” at the time of his death, having been hit with an ITIS rate of 19% during his 2024/25 season.
“I contacted his employer as to why Mr Castrudes was not paying income tax [until then], I was advised they never received the ITIS rate from Mr Castrudes”, he added.
In the year leading up to his death, the detective said, Mr Castrudes sent 73% of his annual salary to the Philippines, leaving him “with very little to live on”.
Advocate Pearce asked: “Is it fair to say that had George not been sending such a significant proportion of his income home, he would have been able to comfortably afford to pay his electricity?”
“Yeah – it was his choice to send that money home”, said the Detective Constable.
But it was also noted that during the relevant period Mr Castrudes was “only once paid on time [and] most of the time was paid two days after he was due to paid”.
The inquest continues today.
