| Fire, suspected to be of electrical origin, completely destroyed a two-storey house at Lot 423 Bee Hive Public Road on Saturday night, while the owners were attending a wedding and a church service.The owners estimated their losses at about $20M.Residents said the fire started at approximately 19:30 hours, after sparks were seen coming from a nearby utility post. Kaieteur News understands that neighbours could not enter the yard to extinguish the fire, because a wire from a nearby utility pole had fallen into the yard, which was under some eight inches of water.A youth from the village had apparently attempted to enter the yard, and received a mild electric shock as he touched the water in the flooded yard.One of the occupants of the house, Michelle Cromwell, was attending her niece’s wedding a few villages away, and her three children were all attending church when the fire started. Cromwell’s husband is said to have been on the Corentyne working.When the fire started, neighbours tried to find a telephone number for the residence of Cromwell’s niece or of the church where the children were attending the service.When word finally reached the occupants of the house, some 45 minutes after the fire had started, they rushed home only to find that their house was already consumed by flames.Kaieteur News was told that staffers from the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) company arrived on the scene just minutes before the fire service came, to disconnect the electricity.Added to this, the fire service allegedly took about an hour to reach the scene.Cromwell explained to this newspaper that everything in the house had been lost,Wholesale NFL Jerseys, “Furniture, a computer, the house, everything gone.”She estimates the family’s losses at about $20M.Added to this, Cromwell said, her 16-year-old daughter, Zenia Cromwell, was preparing for the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) Examinations, and all of her exercise books, text books and school-based assessments (SBAs) had been destroyed in the fire.Presently, the Cromwell family is staying with one of Michelle’s siblings in Ann’s Grove. This latest fire on the East Coast of Demerara has raised additional concern over the fact that there is no fire station on the East Coast.Over the past few months, the call for the Fire Service to be decentralized has been heard repeatedly. |
