Wall lamp reportedly sets home on fire

Jul 20, 2021 News

Kaieteur News – A wall lamp is being blamed for a fire on Sunday last that destroyed the home of a single parent mother and her 16-year-old daughter.
The victims’ one storey, wooden house, which was located at Lot 315 Grove Housing Scheme, East Bank Demerara (EBD), reportedly caught fire around 22:10hrs.
According to the Guyana Fire Service (GFS), the blaze severely scorched the walls of a nearby building as well.

The house in flames Sunday night.

Speaking with Kaieteur News yesterday, the single parent mother, Nadia Singh, recalled that she had just returned from visiting a friend and while walking along the street leading to her home she noticed that it was engulfed in flames.As she got closer, the woman recounted, there was a small crowd gathered in front of the lot and her neighbours informed her that they had already called the fire station.
GFS stated in a release that it had dispatched two fire trucks to the scene – one from the Diamond Fire Station and another from the West Ruimveldt Fire Station.
The tenders arrived promptly and fire fighters extinguished the blaze but were unable to save Singh’s house.
According to the GFS, it carried out the investigations and had suspected that it was an unattended kerosene stove that caused the fire. Singh’s daughter, who was home at time, revealed however that it was a wall lamp that caused the fire.Singh explained that they have been without electricity for a year now and would use wall lamps fuelled by kerosene at nights.

The destroyed home of Nadia Singh and her daughter.

Singh said that before leaving the home she had instructed her daughter to remove it from a shelf in one of the rooms because “the cat or strong wind might throw it down.”
The daughter, this publication was informed, had forgotten to carry out the instruction and while her mother was away she went out into the backyard and got “caught up texting on her smart phone.”
A few moments later, the teenager revealed, she lifted up her head and saw that the “house was brighter than it would normally be.”
She reportedly stopped texting and ran to the house to investigate the “extremely bright light” but when she got there the mattress and the entire room where the wall lamp was located was completely engulfed in flames.
The teenager raised an alarm and neighbours assisted in calling the GFS. By time the fire fighters arrived at the scene, the entire building was on fire and there was not much that could be done to save the building.
Singh related that the house belongs to her parents but she had moved there with her daughter after her husband had died some seven years ago.
The woman noted that the building was not insured and that she lost everything in the blaze.
Singh and her daughter are currently staying at her sister’s home located on the West Bank of Demerara as they try to restart their lives.

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