Devon Beckles, the owner of Bolo and Sons Enterprise, blames the Guyana Fire Service for not containing the fire which gutted his store and another building in Bartica on Monday night.
In a telephone interview, the 41-year-old Beckles relayed the details of the night when the general store he has owned for 20 years was completely gutted along with the Morocco Hotel and expressed his dissatisfaction with the fire service’s response to the fire even though they arrived on time.
He said that he was alerted to the fire at around 10:21 pm and arrived at the scene about ten minutes later. “When I meet there, the fire service was there. They done break into the back door, [So] I kick open the glass door in front and bring them into the building from the front. Then I go and I get some flashlights because they didn’t have no light, no respirators, nothing at all. They didn’t really go in the building but I give them access from the front,” he said. The store proprietor then added that after helping the fire fighters, he went into the office area of the building, which was not yet touched by the fire. “I went into the office and took out my documents and so forth. I start throwing water and soaking up the office area you know because there was no fire in there,” he said before adding that when the fire started it was not big and was only in one part of the building.
The man then went on to say that the fire service was at fault for allowing the fire to expand and cause so much damage because although they arrived on time, they did not come with water. “Both trucks were there but neither had water. They arrived before me at the store [and] at that time the upstairs of the building was the only part that was burning,’’ he informed before lamenting that “it was their [the Fire Service] negligence.” Beckles also added that he does not know the source of the fire but is certain that it could have been contained.
“I had enough time, I could have evacuate everything out of the electrical side,” he said while insisting that the fire was not uncontainable and could have been put out a lot sooner. Beckles said that when he arrived, he noticed that the smoke was emanating from the gents department of the store and he signalled this to the fire service. He further noted that the fire was close to the children’s section of the store.
He also observed that the fire was internal, therefore the firefighters need to get inside and extinguish it from the inside but they could not do so because they were not properly equipped. “Them didn’t have no respirator, [so] they could not go into the building and fight the fire because of the smoke. [So] It end up escalating” Beckles said.
Beckles also complained that the firefighters ended up leaving after they realised they did not have enough water to put out the fire. This, he explained, added to the time away from the fire, hence, allowing the fire to expand and spread to other parts of the building until eventually both buildings were in flames. “The fire service come there on time but they end up leaving for over a whole hour. They didn’t do their job,” he said, “After they get access to the upstairs of the building, we break the flooring and break down the back door. They could have sprayed from the flooring and the water would have meet fire,” he added.
According to the store owner, the building belonging to Banks DIH, which is next door to the store, was not caught in the flames. He said that after the store and the other building was burnt, the fire service tried to prevent the fire from causing further damage to other buildings and this, he said, should have been their goal from the start. “They should have contained the fire at the building it started at since it was just a small fire at the time,” Beckles said. He also said that when the fire service left to get water, the neighbouring hotel was not yet on fire, but the time they took to return give the fire time to spread. He also said that public-spirited persons tried to help out the fire but by then it was already out of control and the fire service had already left to get water.
Beckles said that he is upset with the fire service because they left the building to burn after they realised the fire was already out of control and instead, they turned to the Banks DIH building and tried to stop the fire from catching there. “‘How ya’ll could sleep at night knowing that ya’ll allow this here to happen’ I asked them, they couldn’t answer me…because [they] meet there at 10.30 and by 12 everything up in flames. Look how long that was…,” he said.
Beckles estimates his losses to be over $40 million and disclosed that it was his family’s only source of income since the other businesses, owned by his family are located in Linden and therefore shut down due to the COVID-19 lockdown. “Me and my mother have two other small businesses in Linden but this is the one we depend on the most. Since Linden lock down and now we all here and I don’t know which side to turn,” the distraught owner explained.
Beckles said that at the moment he doesn’t know what started the fire but the police have told them that it was due to a fault with an air conditioner in the store. However, he refutes that possibility since the air conditioner stopped working sometime last year.
Finally, he said that the night of the fire, was the first night in a long time that he left the store early. “I usually does stay late to finish off packing and to check for items that need to be restocked but that night I didn’t stay late. If I had stayed back it wouldn’t have gone,” he sorrowfully said.
Beckles rented the building from Amanda King, who he said is the sister of the owner of the Morocco Hotel, Penelope Canterbury. He explained that King is currently living in the interior and would not be coming out until the end of the month, but even then he said, he doesn’t know what to do next since his business is gone.
