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Nine homeless as fire flattens four-apartment building at Ituni
Fire rages through the apartment building at Ituni
Nine persons, including a Secondary Schools’ Entrance Examinations (common entrance) teacher, were left with only the clothes on their backs after fire destroyed a four-apartment building at Ituni, Upper Demerara River early yesterday morning.
Residents are convinced that the fire was electrical in origin and are laying the blame squarely at the feet of the power company that supplies electricity to the community.
The fire which started around 08:30 hours has left the schoolteacher Yvonne Nazir, her husband and three children along with four other persons homeless.
Kaieteur News understands that the teacher and her family who occupy the largest portion of the building, were not at home when the fire started. By the time they rushed back there, all they could do was watch helplessly as the flames quickly destroyed the wooden building. According to an eyewitness, the fire started in one of the apartments that was occupied by a male tenant.
The eyewitness said that the man had gone out early yesterday morning and when he returned he saw fire in his bedroom when he was about to open up his apartment.
He raised an alarm and several persons, including students and teachers from the nearby Ituni Primary School ran out to see what was happening.
“Everybody run out; de whole village run out,” the eyewitness told this newspaper. Another male, a policeman, who lived in the other apartment, was also not at home when the fire started.
In fact, he was at his mother-in-law’s when he heard the screams of “fire”.
He too could not save anything because by the time he rushed back to his apartment, the fire had already consumed it. “Nobody got to save anything,” the eyewitness stated.
Kaieteur News understands that the teacher had to receive medical treatment as she kept falling in and out of consciousness, since she suffers from hypertension. A fire tender arrived two hours later from Kwakwani, some 18 miles away only to douse the embers of what was once an inferno.
Residents explained that the community is served by two generators that provide electricity over two 12-hour periods.
They claimed that there is usually a power surge whenever there is a changeover of generators, and this caused the fire because it was around the same time that the fire started.
Last year another resident of the community, Orlene Murphy, lost her home under similar circumstances.
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