A mentally-challenged man was yesterday rescued from his burning Sophia home by a youth, who broke down the door and dragged him out before the building burnt to the ground.
Geoffrey ‘Cuffy’ Mc Ewan, 49, watched as his Lot 399 Palin Street, Section ‘B’ Sophia home burnt to the ground following a fire of unknown origin around 1 pm yesterday.
Fire-fighters arrived on the scene about 20 minutes after they were called but by that time, the old structure was already destroyed.
Meanwhile, Danesh Rampersaud, the young man who saved the man, told Stabroek News that he noticed the smoke and aware of Mc Ewan’s condition, he immediately rushed to the yard and attempted to break the door down.
“This man deh in this house here and I barely look and see this house on fire. I had to pull out the whole hinges to get the man out. When he come out, the man fall down and I had to drag he out,” Rampersaud explained.
Mc Ewan, who had visible bruises and burns about his body afterwards, was found sitting on a neighbour’s step. He said that he was asleep in his flat wooden house when he was awakened by thick smoke.
He said he tried desperately to extinguish the fire but failed to do so.
“I just get up and see the smoke start blowing and I try to out it with a bucket of water but I couldn’t out it… it just get bigger,” Mc Ewan said, adding that the fire started in his bedroom but he was clueless as to what caused it.
“I don’t know how the fire start. I didn’t lef nothing on. Right now, I in a lot of pain,” he said. He explained that he has lost his bicycle, television, microwave, among other valuables in the blaze.
Mc Ewan said he intends on travelling to his sister’s Bent Street, Werk-en-Rust home to stay there.
