An electrical fire in a Court Street clothing store has caused an estimated $50,000 worth of damage and left owner Judith Burgess despairing at a year strewn with misfortune.

The Bermuda Fire Service responded to reports of smoke emanating from Kids 2002 adjacent to the Spinning Wheel nightclub at around 7.20 a.m yesterday, and it took four fire trucks and ten firefighters to extinguish the blaze. Although the fire itself was described by BFS spokesman Lt. Dana Lovell as relatively minor, the damage inside the tiny store was substantial ? with ruined, singed clothes spread out across the floor, paint peeling from the walls and the cash register almost entirely melted.

Speaking to , Mrs. Burgess said she had been awoken by a telephone call approximately 20 minutes after the fire started, and arrived on Court Street to see firefighters ?everywhere? and smoke pouring out of the shop?s narrow entrance. And while the building itself is covered by insurance, Mrs. Burgess revealed she would take a heavy financial hit from the loss of most of her in-store stock which had just been replenished in anticipation of the lucrative back-to-school sales.

But the fire damage is not the first expensive inconvenience she has had to endure this year, Mrs. Burgess continued.

An apartment she owns across the road from clothing store, which was rented by the alleged murderer of one of the Cooper twins, Jermaine Burgess, was heavily vandalised on the night the twins went missing, she said, while many of the recent renovations conducted on her own home have had to be redone because of shoddy workmanship and faulty fixtures.

?This has been a terrible year for me ? I hope to God this is the last of it,? Mrs. Burgess lamented.