Fire leaves young mother, four children homeless

Apr 20, 2014 News

Fire struck with vengeance late yesterday afternoon in Nabaclis, East Coast Demerara, leaving a young mother and her four children homeless.
The blaze started around 16:30 hours when only two of the children were at home in the single flat Second Street, Nabaclis building.
Neighbours said that they heard one of the children screaming after running out of the house. When they looked over at the house, they saw smoke billowing from the centre of the house. By the time a bucket brigade went into action, most of the house was already engulfed in flames.
Nigel Ward, a neighbour who lives a few houses away, said that he had just arrived home

Fire bellowing from the house.

when he saw the fire. He said that he immediately rushed over and together with other villagers formed a bucket brigade to try to extinguish the blaze.
“We try with the bucket brigade and we were controlling the fire but it got out of hand and we couldn’t control it, so we had to surrender,” Ward said.
Ward said that by then a fire tender from the Enmore Estate arrived but according to him, they took about an hour to set up their hoses, and even after then they never got down to fighting the fire.
It was left for another fire tender which arrived from Mahaica to go into action but by then the house had been consumed by the fire.
The children had already been taken to safety, while their mother Tonza Woolford who was at work in the city was informed.
“It was the negligence of the GuySuCo Fire Service and I will send the message out to the government, in the next budget cut. We want cut (GuySuCo) fire service budget for negligence,” an angry Ward told members of the media.
After the blaze was extinguished, Woolford arrived and broke into tears upon seeing the destruction.
Neighbours quickly took her away from the scene in an effort to console her. But try as they might the reality of being homeless with four young children is not something that can be easily erased.
Investigators will revisit the scene with the aim of ascertaining the cause of the fire.