An early morning fire in New Amsterdam, which destroyed a popular restaurant and a house, has left two people homeless and ten others jobless.
The fire which reportedly originated in the kitchen of popular restaurant Jokwesan’s Creole Corner and Catering Service at Charlotte Street east, blazed its way through the restaurant destroying it and an old wooden house next door. Efforts by the fire service to save the restaurant and neighbouring house were futile, but they did manage to save another house, which was scorched. Courts Furniture Store also escaped the destruction.
Co-proprietor of Jokwesan’s Angela Williams, who along with her husband John operated the restaurant with a staff of ten, could only watch helplessly as her source of income went up in flames. Visibly distraught, she explained that no one was in the building at the time of the fire. “Nobody don’t really live here. We work here in the day then we lock up and go home,” she said. “Neighbours apparently noticed the fire and call, but when I got here it was too late.” Williams could not estimate her losses, as she and her husband had run the restaurant for the past decade and had acquired numerous assets. Shaking her head to get over the shock she said “big losses, big losses…. that’s all I can say; the freezer, other stuff… too many to speak of, everything gone.” Williams was at a lost as to how and when the fire could have started, but was skeptical that it came from the restaurant’s kitchen.
Simone Bruce a resident of the street told Stabroek News she had just returned home from church and was watching television with her fiancé when they heard screams. “I came home from prayer meeting like 01:20hrs…, and when I get in me and my fiancé we were inside watching TV. After I felt sleepy, we turn off and 20 to 30 minutes after I hear my sister-in-law calling for her brother and telling us ‘fire! fire!’ So we jump up and when we look out through the door we see the blaze.”
Noticing the fire emanating from the eating house, Bruce said, “We rush in back the house and tell my sister-in-law to come outside because the house next door de start catching.” At that point, other neighbours had awakened and upon realising that persons were inside the burning house, efforts were made to rescue them.
“We get de guys them on the other side to call for the man and his wife in the house, because they were in the house sleeping,” explained Bruce who added that “the guys them had to go kick down the door to get them out, when the house burst in flames.”
During the commotion and confusion, they had forgotten to call the fire service and it was only until “the fire gradually get bigger and start spread, we call the fire station,” Bruce admitted. “It [fire engine] take a while to come… somebody had to ride and go to the fire station to get them to come here.”
Eighty-year-old Ivy Christie who lives in the front house and owns the destroyed buildings said she is fortunate her house was saved from the fire, but her son Geoffrey and his wife Linda were not so lucky. “I see the fire coming from the restaurant, I smell smoke and jump up. And when I look I see the sky red, red. It burn all me son things; left he homeless… Just de clothes that he got on, that’s all he left with. He and he wife – they de sleeping.
“I did sleeping, then like I hear somebody hollering ‘fire! fire!’ so I jump up and go outside and I start hollering fire! fire! fire!” Christie said she heard “de neighbours down the street hollering ‘fire! fire!’ too but not a soul ain’t went on the road to help.” Dazed by the ordeal, she whispered, “all them place close up, nobody, not a cricket went out. Them had to go to the station [police] to call for the fire engine… it tek long, long”. She opined that “if the fire engine de come on time de house would have save.”
Christie’s son Geoffrey and daughter-in-law were rescued from the fire but didn’t manage to save any of their material possessions. “On to now I still puzzle how this fire start,” she mused, “it got to be it start at the back where the restaurant kitchen deh. I ain’t know, they must have left on something on the stove. We deserve this? We ain’t deserve this.”
Meanwhile, a fire officer told this publication that investigations into the origin of the fire are ongoing, but based on preliminary results it appeared to have originated in the kitchen of the restaurant. In response to allegations that calls to the fire station in New Amsterdam went unanswered, he said the station’s dispatcher was at no time away from the phones and that the station only received a call shortly after 03:00hrs to which they promptly responded. “We came with two trucks – one working from the Republic Road Canal and one from the fire hydrant on Main Road,” he said.
The fire officer said they had “no difficulty sourcing water… the only problem we had was that one of the fire hydrants, the pit was full with a lot of obstacles inside, like persons use it as a garbage dump. So when we throw our suction overboard when we try to lift the water there was blockage, so we had to divert from that pit and go to a next one at King Street.”
Police officers stationed at the nearby Central Police Station in New Amsterdam were out in their numbers and quickly cordoned off the entire block preventing the usual crowd of people from congesting the scene hindering the fire fighters from doing their job and dissuading possible looters from using the fire as an opportunity to vandalise the nearby Courts Furniture Store.
