A family of seven is now homeless after a fire ripped through their one-bedroom dwelling in Good Hope on the East Coast of Demerara last night, burning it to the ground.
Yamkumeran Bissoon and her six children were sitting on the roadside of the front of their yard waiting for someone to offer them a place to sleep up to press time last night after her eldest son left a candle burning.
Bissoon related that around 7:00 pm she left her home to go and bathe at a neighbour since her water was cut off and she told her son to light a candle. “While I was bathing somebody ring my phone and said fire inside my house that it was burning down” she said, noting that she had to have a boy in the village break down her door because her children were trapped in the house.
“All of them were sleeping…one of them said that he felt the heat and when he open his eyes he see the fire,” she stated. Bissoon said she had no electricity for the past two weeks and was using candles. “Tomorrow [today] my daughter has to write common entrance and all her books burn up…we lost everything, nothing ain’t save.”
Residents in the area said the fire service took an hour to arrive at the scene by which time the house was already flattened by the flames.
Bissoon lamented that she has been the sole provider for her family since her husband got sentenced to prison for chopping her. “It’s really hard on me… I have to take care for all of them.”
