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Fire destroys three Kitty houses
Kaieteur News- Several families are now homeless following a massive fire that ripped through three houses between Pike and Thomas Street, Kitty, Georgetown yesterday.
The fire reportedly started sometime after midday, eyewitnesses said. One of them recalled that he was walking along Pike Street when he saw a fire quickly spreading near a dog pen and a mango tree between two of the houses, a two-story and a three-story building.
He then heard neighbours shouting, “Fire! fire!”.
“I know them does ga a German shepherd in deh suh I run to see if it in there and try to save it”, the eyewitness told Kaieteur News.
However, the fire began to spread quickly, and he was forced to retreat.
Firefighters trying to save the third house from complete destruction
When Kaieteur News arrived at the scene, the two houses were already burnt to the ground, and firefighters were fighting to save the third house, another two-storey building located on the western end of the three-storey one.
Despite their efforts, the fire swept through the entire top flat and began to gut the bottom.
As firefighters continued to battle the blaze, a woman arrived on the scene and began praying.
She owned a house under construction that was close to the fire. The fire had already started to scorch some plants in her yard and a part of her roof.
She began wetting the walls of her unfinished house in a desperate bid to save it.
Two other women arrived shortly after saying, “Workplace burn down, now tomorrow we ain’t got no work”.
According to one of them, she worked in the three-storey building.
She claimed that it was owned by a woman living overseas who was renting the property.
A trail of devastation left behind by a Labour Day fire.
Kaieteur News learnt that some elderly persons lived on the bottom flat of the property while she worked on the second floor. On the top floor lived an elderly woman and her son.
All of the occupants managed to escape the fire. The elderly woman and her son reportedly had to be helped out of the building.
Meanwhile, Joseph Barnes, one of the fire victims and owner of the two-storey house located on the eastern side of the three-storey building, said that he was resting when the fire started. When he stepped out of his home, the entire eastern wall of the three-storey building was on fire.
His house was not yet on fire, but his neighbours urged him to leave the house immediately before the three-storey building started caving in.
Barnes obeyed. The first fire trucks, according to him, arrived within three to four minutes but they reportedly came with limited water resources to tackle the blaze, which quickly turned into a major disaster.
The remains of Barne’s home
“The water done and by time they get more and come back, the fire began spreading rapidly and engulfed my home before ketchin the white house…”
Barnes had no choice but to stand and watch his home burn to the ground along with the three-storey building.
He was the only one residing at his property at the time, and it was insured.
Asked about his losses, Barnes responded, “I don’t want to put a figure to it, but it is deep in the millions”.
He added, “I lost a lot of things of sentimental value”.
Looking back at the disaster, Barnes said that he had a five-minute window to salvage some valuable items from his home before it caught fire, but he did not expect the fire would have spread so quickly.
He blamed his “state of mind” at the time, too.
Barnes said, “I listened to the people (his neighbours who raised the alarm, they were shouting come out, come out, the thing could cave in, yuh life, yuh life, remember the fireman that get killed by the school”.
The origin of the fire is unknown at this time, and fire investigators, up to press time, were still trying to ascertain the exact location where it started.
Investigations are ongoing.
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why you always turning up without water?
vote out this gov’t.