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Industry fire victims seek assistance after setback
Trying to get back on track: Gangapersaud Bachan, Inderdai Bahadur and their two children.
While the smoke has cleared, and the glowing embers have been extinguished, the knowledge that all of their worldly possessions are gone and the fact that they have no roof over their heads still hangs heavy over Gangapersaud Bachan, Inderdai Bahadur and their two young children.
Suspected to be electrical in origin, the Sunday afternoon blaze that razed their Lot 5, First Street, Industry Housing Scheme home was devastating to say the least. “Right now, we are just sitting down, thinking where we can go and what we can cover our heads with,” said Bahadur, when she spoke with this newspaper yesterday.
The family has already received contributions of clothing from members of the Baha’i Community. Bahadur said that she had reported to the Guyana Fire Service headquarters yesterday morning, where she gave a statement.
She said that she was told that she should report to them in one week, when she would be presented with a letter that would enable her to receive some sort of assistance.
Bahadur revealed that her eldest daughter, 5-year-old Maleesa, did not attend school yesterday – the first day of the new term. However, Bahadur said that she went to her daughter’s school and spoke with the teachers there, who said that given the circumstances, the 5-year-old could attend classes in her regular clothes.
Maleesa is expected to be back at school today.
At present, the family is staying at the home of Bahadur’s sister, who also lives in the Industry Housing Scheme. Bahadur said that while she was grateful that her sister had taken she and her family in, she wanted to get back on her own as soon as possible.
This fire, like many of the fires on the East Coast Demerara before it, has prompted residents to again issue calls to have the Guyana Fire Service decentralized.
In Georgetown, there are some four fire stations, while on the West Coast Demerara there is a fire station at Leonora. Demerara is sometimes bolstered by the support of the fire services of the estates of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), which sometimes respond to fires nearby their respective estates.
Former Fire Chief, Lawrence David, before he retired from that post, had explained to Kaieteur News that as there is development and expansion of the population of a country, additional fire stations would be needed to cope with the increased fire risk.
He had said that one of the biggest challenges, which the Fire Service faced, was the distance between the fire stations and the conflagrations.
“The distance hinders our response time, and in doing so affects our effectiveness,” Lawrence opined.
More often than not, the Guyana Fire Service responds quickly, when a report of a fire is made, but the sheer distance of the fire station from the blaze often results in the building(s) in question, being completely destroyed before the fire fighters arrive on the scene. (Rustom Seegopaul)
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