A massive fire yesterday afternoon gutted the entire Parika Marketing Complex located on the East Bank of Essequibo (EBE) along with other stalls which were on the road side, leaving dozens of vendors counting their losses.
The fire was thought to have been triggered by sparks which emanated from welding which was being done on the roof of the market complex. The sparks came into contact with a stall that was reportedly selling squibs, flares and other explosives.
In a release yesterday, the Guyana Fire Service said that they were alerted to the fire at about 3:14pm and immediately dispatched five water tenders, one water bowser, and two support vehicles from the Leonora, La Grange, Eccles, Campbellville, Central, and West Ruimveldt fire stations to the location with the first water tender arriving on the scene at 15:36 pm. They began their firefighting operation by first utilising tank supplies, after which they made use of the Essequibo River as an open water source.
The fire service said that their preliminary investigations have so far revealed that construction workers who were in the process of rebuilding the market were conducting welding when sparks came into contact with nearby combustible materials which ignited and caused the market complex to be severely damaged by the time fire-fighters tried to extinguish the huge blaze.
Due to the presence of so much combustible material, the fire kept reigniting, and up to press time fire-fighters were still on the scene trying to completely put out the blaze.
Meanwhile, at the scene of devastation and chaos, Stabroek News managed to speak with a few vendors who recollected the moment the fire started and their subsequent responses. Many of them acknowledged that they initially heard sounds followed by a huge blaze and thick black smoke.
Fifty-four-year-old Meena Rampersaud and her 35-year-old daughter said that they were standing at their stall when they heard “squib noises” and suddenly saw fire coming from a stall in the market which was located right under where the men were working on the roof of the complex. She said that after the fire erupted, the fire service took some time to reach to the location.
“The carpenter went up top that building right, like them went doing some kinda welding and the welding, well you know you does get spark from it and apparently it pitched in the people them stand, the stand was like a tall wooden and white building and it pitched in the stall and like the people had fireworks and it come in contact with it and this thing start fuh go off like ‘Bow! Bow!’ like squib noises and from deh the fire start… when everybody see that, everybody start fuh cry and the police them just come and order we to move and we couldn’t get to save anything…this fire truck like it came like three hours after and it barely had water, like them only come with one black tank of water because when them start spray, the water finished just like that and they couldn’t able out the fire on the road much less the fire in the market. They tek a good while to out the fire and even unto now the fire nah out properly…”, she said.
Rampersaud said that she owned two stalls, one located along the road side and the other which she used to store her goods was located in the market complex, and she has since estimated her loss to be in the millions. “My stall burn down flat, flat on the road… I used to sell all kinds of thing from clothes to snacks to everything… and then we have another stall in the market itself where we used to store whatever we used to sell because we does can’t bring out all in front and even to that burn down, is two stands burn down one fuh me and one fuh me daughter… me lost plenty, millions in dollars because we had plenty things and we used to sell everything that you could think about.”
Eleven
The woman who has been a vendor since the age of eleven said that vending was the only source of income and that she’s now stuck with two loans to repay which she had borrowed to build her business. “This is the work I do for my living, I don’t depend on nothing else but this selling, I have loan to pay and I have debts to pay, we tek the loan to build the stall and build we business and I can’t do nothing now…we gah get help we gah get something because how we go start back?” asked a visibly distraught Rampersaud.
Rohan Lall, on the other hand, could not estimate his losses but opined that it was “plenty.” Although he was devastated by the incident, he was also disappointed by passersby who took the opportunity to steal many of the vendors’ products.
“When I was approaching coming towards my stall I saw the fire in the market centre and as such the fire now is getting more outrageous with the breeze and the building start to burn, noises, sounds like fireworks like been going off… so people immediately start evacuating and stuff, taking out them stuff from the market centre… and then we start helping people now to save their items… fire get more alarming and more terrible and start burning the end stalls… then we stuff start scorching then we had to end up now leaving people because we had to go save ours. Then people thiefing the goods too, so we lost a lot of goods that scorched and burn up in the fire too… we have losses, we have people thief things from us cause same time you try to help people out, people try to thief from you also”, he said.
Marcia Joseph, who was at her five stalls which were all connected has estimated her losses to be in the billions since she and her husband were primarily gold and electronic vendors but would also sell clothes and other products. “The fire started like on a high stall in the market and the guys that are building the market were doing some works on the roof top like and the people were selling fireworks at the bottom and some spark from the welding catch unto the fireworks and that’s how the fire came about and it quickly spread to my five stalls in minutes, me and two other employees were at my stalls, my husband was in town coming down… we would estimate our losses in (millions) because me and my husband used to sell gold jewellery, phone, clothing, anything you name it… my husband selling here for years now, since he was young.”
Asked what was her next plan since she and her husband have lost so much, the young woman responded, “Well, we have to see what we get, what we managed to save, we mostly managed to save clothing and some jewellery but nothing much… all other personal items we lost including monies and some people gold work and so on.”
Sharmila Shaw’s nephew said that his aunt sold a variety of items like clothes, and jewellery which were completely destroyed in the fire. He estimated that his aunt has lost several million dollars’ worth of goods and is devastated as she’s not certain where they will be vending now.
Meanwhile another stall holder Ryan Sookram, 34 years old, related to Stabroek News that normally he would assist his grandmother to pack up at 4 pm, however while at the stall, workers from a private company were welding on the roof of the market, when apparently the sparks from the welding spread to the clothes that a stall holder was selling and the resulting fire started around 3 pm. He estimates that his grandmother has lost about $200,000 in goods. This is worrying for her, he disclosed, as the two are the breadwinners of the home and she has lost all of her stock. They are not sure what will happen after this.
Alicia Dias who sells clothes and phones in the market said that she heard a loud noise and then the fire started. An emotional Dias said that she ran for safety and could not save any of her items. She added that she’s not sure how the fire started but she knows it came from Sharmila’s building at the top. While the emotional stall holder couldn’t say how much she lost in the fire, she said that vending is her main source of income and now and as such her financial future is uncertain.
Purported
Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn, was at the scene and he urged the public to remain cautious regarding the purported cause of the fire while reminding that it was not the confirmed conclusion of the fire service. “We understand but we’ll have to clarify later, confirm later, that there was welding going on in the building and that the sparks fell down unto flammable substances that is what we understand so far as to why this has happened…we have challenges still but we have it under control now from spreading.”
Benn said that as he sympathizes with the vendors and intends to make lists of their names in order to evaluate their losses, he is also contending that there were prior issues with the way in which vending was being done at the market. “We are intended to meet with those who claim they have losses and make listings for consideration and evaluation and assessment and then we’ll take it from there… in many ways we have always had issues in relation to how vending was going on here… people were on the road, the vending stalls were against the bridge there, perhaps giving the size of the fire there are some things which in a situation like this could’ve been expected given how the foot print of the vending was being covered.”
Benn told the media that he was at a funeral in Georgetown when he heard that there was a fire. He said a total of four fire tenders were dispatched and immediately used up the water in the tanks, which amounted to about 450 to 600 gallons.
They retained the rest of the water to prime from an open source, which was the river.
Onlookers told Stabroek News that the fire spread quickly because of the afternoon sea breeze. It quickly engulfed the building, destroying several stalls that were in front of the building and across the road.
After the blaze was quelled, some of the jewellery vendors from along the roadside were seen rummaging through the rubble and salvaging whatever pieces they could find. Some of the jewellery were in vaults.
Another jewellery vendor, whose stall was inside the market, said he was too traumatized to speak. He told this newspaper though, that he was selling there for over 30 years and lost “millions of dollars.”
The stalls in front of the market were destroyed before the fire crossed the road and ravaged a few others on the opposite side. Stabroek News watched as the blaze destroyed the stalls one after the other, before the firefighters finally doused that area and the last stall was saved from being burnt.
A vendor whose stall was on the opposite of the road, said she sold “everything you could think about,” including clothing, footwear, long boots and items for the interior, like hammock and mosquito nets. She lost everything!
At the back of the building, which also housed an office in the upper flat, many residents, including women and children were seen grabbing and looting whatever items they could get from the stalls.
A vendor said she was sitting in her stall talking to her husband when she heard what sounded like six loud explosions. They ran out of their stall to see fire starting from another stall. Their first instinct was to assist the vendors from the stalls close to the one on fire, to remove their items.
She said the firefighters took about one hour to arrive at the scene but could not do much to quell the blaze, which continued to spread rapidly.
In tears, said she when she realised that the fire was spreading to her stalls she could do nothing but “run to save my life.”
The fire disrupted the normal operations of the speedboats, which were rerouted to the nearby Big Kiss wharf for passengers to embark and disembark. Vehicles were initially unable to get off the ferries because the fire tenders were blocking their path, while trying to source water from the river.
Within the marketing centre, in excess of 160 persons were affected. They lost all of their belongings.
A vendor, Samlall who had operated a Snackette and confectionary stall in the marketing centre for about 15 years, said the fire started in the middle of the market and felt that more could have been done to save the outer part of the market.
He said he went through the Parika Police Station, located opposite the marketing centre and begged the firefighters to do something to prevent the blaze from spreading to the stalls across the road. According to him, they responded that they could not “drive on the [vehicle weighing] scale to come in the heat.”
Up to late yesterday evening, thick smoke was still billowing and vendors and employees were still trying to come to grips with the major devastation that had taken place.
Notice
Meanwhile, Chairman of Region Three, Inshan Ayube, yesterday told the media that the vendors were given notice to evacuate the market complex as recently as Monday but they had failed to do so. He described the sudden tragedy as “unfortunate.”
“First of all I would like to ask you to recognise the fact that the government was constructing a modern market here because they would’ve recognised the congestion that was out here and the type of marketing that was being done, we recognised that the stalls with a lot of old woods and all kinda thing these vendors were using and we are in the process of constructing that market that you see there.”
“…We had a meeting with the vendors and we told them at some point of time they will have to remove from the front here so that the construction would’ve moved on, incidentally during the Christmas holiday they were informed that immediately after the holiday they would need to move, last week they were supposed to move, they failed to do so, I’m not saying this to diminish what they would’ve lost or anything but I’m saying how this thing happened is very unfortunate because I was here Tuesday and I had a meeting with them at the front there and I said you know the construction work have to move on so you’ll be moving Monday which they agree, so what happen here today is very unfortunate.”
Due to the raging fire, persons could not disembark the various Essequibo ferries and were forced to wait until the fire was completely extinguished by fire-fighters for their own safety.
Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar who was also at the scene said that the ferries would have to wait due to two water tenders which were on the stelling using the Essequibo River as an open water source. As such, the chaos had delayed the scheduled timings of the ferries and also had caused backed up traffic along the East Bank Essequibo road.
The Parika market is one of Guyana’s oldest markets and the area is considered the gateway to Region Three. It is close to the stelling and is one of the places where many persons from various regions travel to ply their trade and deliver their produce to be sold.
