Residents of a six-apartment building at Lot 101 Hunter Street, West La Penitence which was destroyed by fire late Saturday afternoon have begun to pick up the pieces, with some families temporarily seeking shelter with their relatives while some have started rebuilding structures on the burnt out site.
Stabroek News visited the scene of Saturday afternoon’s fire yesterday and spoke to several persons at the site who were affected, some erecting small structures with the hope of completing same before nightfall yesterday. They said that some 20 persons lived at the location in addition to several children, one man stating that “families now gone in different directions” as he solicited financial support from the travelling public along Hunter Street yesterday. He said that the fire was not electrical in origin and may have started in the home of another occupant.
According to a neighbour, members of the Guyana Fire Service revisited the area yesterday morning to conduct investigations into the cause of the fire, noting that a woman in whose home the fire was believed to have started, and who was reportedly cooking minutes before the fire started, reportedly under the influence of alcohol, has not been seen since.
The woman disappeared from the scene after the fire started on Saturday with her children.
Neighbours at the scene yesterday continued to voice their concern at the reaction of the fire department on Saturday, one person stating that the firemen arrived on the scene with limited water in the fire trucks and took a while to source water from nearby trenches as the fire swept through the building.
Some eight families have been affected by the fire which lasted for some 30 minutes, leaving some occupants of the building with only the clothing they wore at the time.
