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What a coincidence!

Aug 14, 2008 News

As Guyana was preparing to host Carifesta back in August of 1972, residents of the Middle and Thomas Streets, North Cummingsburg area were plunged into a state of shock and grief as a fire left some 150 persons homeless.
On Tuesday August 1, 1972 a mid-morning blaze destroyed some 13 homes on Middle Street.
That fire started around 10:30 hours at a wooden building next door to the then Empire Cinema on Middle Street and worked its way through house after house into Thomas Street.
Exactly 24 days later, amidst pomp and ceremony, Guyana held the opening ceremony for the Caribbean Festival of Arts (Carifesta).
Yesterday, nine days before Guyana is set to once again stage the mega event, fire raged in Middle Street, oblique to where the 1972 fire started, on the opposite side.
On that fateful August 1, 1972 morning, police began working on the theory that the fire was started by a small boy as he was trying to light an oil stove in one of the burnt houses on Middle Street.
The fire which at one stage posed a threat to nearby Georgetown Public Hospital buildings caused a hurried evacuation of patients from the Eye Clinic and removal of drugs and equipment to places of safety.
Yesterday there was a similar scene as patients in other buildings in the hospital’s compound were evacuated to safer places as fire raged through adjacent buildings.
Fortunately, yesterday’s incident was not as chaotic as the scene thirty-six years ago. During the conflagration in 1972, a total of 23 persons were arrested for looting.

Residents under the pretext of assisting their neighbours made good their escape with valuables. Some looters even posed as detectives, but were challenged when moving away from the scene. In addition, out of the 23 persons who were arrested, nine were charged with larceny.
The total damage was estimated then at $750,000.

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