Two persons perished in an early morning fire yesterday morning at 38 Public Road, Kitty after they failed to escape the flames, while the occupants of an adjoining house which was also razed managed to get out but saved nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Dead are Cyril Robinson, a 90 year-old pensioner and his relative, 17-year-old Alfred Stephens. “The charred remains of Cyril Robinson and Alfred Stephens were later found among the debris,” the police reported in a press release. Police said the origin of the fire, so far, was unknown.
Stabroek News understands that there was no electricity at the time to the house owned by Robinson and occupied by him and his young relative. The old man lived downstairs while the young man lived upstairs, Stabroek News has gathered.
According to neighbours, the fire started some time around 01:00 hrs. It correlates with the police statement which said that the fire started at 00:45 hrs.
Three people managed to escape from the second house, including an elderly diabetic woman.
Recounting the ordeal, 69-year-old Joylene Aulder said that her son Richard Aulder alerted her to the fire. “The house near to me start to ketch a fire and my son call out for fire. He tell me to try and get out,” she said. The other occupant of the house was Debra Aulder, daughter of Joylene and she also managed to get out of the house.
The old woman said that her son was lamenting that he could not save anything from the house because he was busy with making sure that his mother and mentally challenged sister made it out of the house.
“We buy everything for Christmas. Everything gone up in flames. All the foodstuff, my last pension, all my diabetes medication. We ent have no Christmas. All the nice things my sister buy and give me all the memories my sister die and left me,” Joylene Aulder lamented sorrowfully. She noted that her passport, ID cards and medical cards and other records also went up in flames. She made it out of the house with literally the clothes on her back, she said.
The woman is of the view that had the fire tender come earlier than it did at least half of the building in which she lived could have been saved.
She said the house where she lived was owned by her son Richard. But he was not around to provide any information on the status of insurance coverage.
Before retiring in 1997, Aulder worked in the Laundry Department of the Georgetown Hospital.
One neighbour said that the tenders took some time to reach the scene and hence the fire consumed the two old wooden buildings quickly.
“We had to get out,” said Camille Richards, a neighbour who lives behind the two properties that were razed in the fire. “I was in bed when I heard this boom and saw a bright light. My son then said to me mommy get out the house,” she said.
Richards said that by the time the fire tenders arrived on the scene, both of the houses had already been burnt almost to the ground.
Richards said that the windows to the front of the building she occupies were damaged because of the blaze from the nearby houses. A car also belonging to an occupant of one of the spared houses was also burnt up.
