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Fire leaves 24 homeless
It was chaos yesterday afternoon in the community of Bagotstown, East Bank Demerara, when fire fighters desperately tried to save a two-storey house that accommodated four apartments.
Close to 24 persons lived in the house, including eleven children, and all are said to be close family members.
What is surprising is the fact that at around 13:00 hrs yesterday, a curtain in one of the apartments was on fire and the fire service was called in.
That fire was extinguished with minor damage to a television set and a DVD player.
Kaieteur News understands that upon arriving on the first fire scene, the fire officers thoroughly checked all the apartments for any faulty GPL wire that may have caused the small blaze, but they found nothing to indicate the cause of the fire.
However, at around 14:00 hrs, another fire broke out in another apartment, but this time on a bed. It quickly spread and burnt the entire building.
Up to press time, no one could say exactly what caused the second conflagration.
Shonnet Garraway, one of the occupants of the building, told this newspaper that she was in her sister’s apartment speaking with her mother on the phone, when she heard one of her children shouting, “Fire! Fire!”
At the same time, Garraway said that she was telling her mother who is living in New York, about the first fire.
Garraway, a mother of six, said that the second fire started on a bed in her apartment downstairs, while the first one was in her sister’s apartment, also on the bottom flat of the building.
She said that she does not know how the fire started and at the same time emphasized that none of her children was playing with matches.
She noted that since no one could manage to contain the fire, everyone ran out of the house. The woman, who was still in shock as a result of the disaster, said that the family was not able to save anything.
Some residents said that they tried to contain the blaze, but it became uncontrollable and spread rapidly.
“I come and reach the fire. I try fuh help them boys out it, but it de far gone. Nobody could have saved the house,” one man said.
When the fire started, most of the occupants were home. Ovid Phillips, 82, noted that he was at one of his friend’s house, when someone told him that the apartment was on fire.
“When I run in, I couldn’t save anything. I tried the extinguisher, but it was fruitless so I had to run out the house.
All I left with is the shirt and pants that I am wearing,” Phillips said
He noted that he has been living on the bottom flat of the apartment for the past 53 years.
People gathered at the scene and expressed their disbelief at what transpired, since according to them, during the first fire incident, the fire crew found nothing to indicate that a next fire might have taken place.
However, Kaieteur News understands that the fire may have resulted from a domestic dispute among some of the family members.
When questioned if this was the case, Shonnet Garraway, denied such claims.
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