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Mc Doom E.B.D. home up in flames
Eleven persons from three families are homeless after a fire suspected to be of electrical origin destroyed a two-storey wooden building at Lot 25 First Street, Mc Doom, East Bank Demerara yesterday.
The fire which was spotted shortly before 07:00 hours behind the gas station and the mosque in Mc Doom erupted in the lower flat of an apartment and destroyed the entire building within minutes.
Oneika Dowding being comforted by a friend in a neighbours yard after the fire.
The house on the eastern side was severely scorched. Firefighters saved it. They also tried desperately to save the building in which the fire started but the dry and old boards provided ample fuel for the fire.
The people left homeless were Andrea Calendar, Trevor France, Tenisha France, Timera France, Joseph Calendar, John Calendar, Carl Critchlow, Oneika Dowding and her three children Oddessia Amsterdam, Oneila Dowding, and Oneika Thompson. One of the occupants was also identified as a local cricketer, Trevon France.
“I just come home from work and talking to my boss, and was lying down in the hall then I hear ‘paks, paks’. I then get up and start to holler for my daughter; she ain’t answering. These children went outside. I see the children covered in flames. I call for (my daughter) and tell she pass some water so we could out this fire. By that time this place was in black, black smoke upstairs and downstairs,” Oneika Dowding, a mother of three said.
She explained that a mattress in one of the two apartments in the bottom flat was set alight around 7 am after she heard what sounded like electrical sparks when power returned after a brief power outage.
The mother of three, who is a security guard, lamented that her eldest daughter had exams to write and that she had no clothing or anything else left from the house. “Everything burn up, all my electrical appliances that I work hard for gone.”
She noted it has only been one month since she had moved into the apartment and it will be very hard for her as a single parent to recover from her losses. She said that when she was moving to McDoom her father advised her against such a move.
Most of the residents in the building who were getting ready to attend to their daily activities were left in shock as they watched the skeletal remains of the building, many of them in tears.
Neighbours said that they heard someone yelling fire and when they checked the entire building was in smoke, but they could not have assisted with the retrieval of anything from the house since the fire engulfed the building rapidly.
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