Fire Chief Marlon Gentle yesterday said that the cause of the Parfait Harmonie fire that destroyed a two-bedroom home and a smaller apartment on Wednesday evening was the explosion of a kerosene stove.
“The cause of the fire was an exploded kerosene stove, and we are in possession of the stove. The children were trying to fend for themselves,” Gentle said when contacted yesterday
However, Lorna Fraser Robertson refuted these claims, while adding that there was no oil in the stove at the time. “That is not true. They don’t cook like that, if they want to cook bush cook they would go by a friend. They weren’t cooking anything. Everybody around there know what caused the fire,” the woman said.
Robertson shared her Recht Door Zee, Parfait Harmonie home with seven other family members.
One of the younger occupants said that he and others quickly grabbed several buckets of water to douse the blaze, but it was too intense and quickly spread to other parts of the house.
One of Robertson’s daughters, who resided in a small apartment next to the house, also lost her home to the blaze.
