A fire of yet unknown origin gutted part of Guyana Water Inc’s (GWI) bond at La Bonne Intention last evening, leaving in its wake significant damage of the company’s equipment and materials for use in its capital investment works.
According to a staffer of the water company who had been on the scene, someone reportedly saw flames. The person said that there was damage to the items stored in the bond but the extent of the damage could not yet be ascertained. No one was in the building at the time of the fire, which started sometime before 21:00 hours.
When this newspaper arrived at the scene, an enraged neighbour of the bond building came to register his outrage at the staff of the fire service. He said that had he not come around to the guards on duty and told them that the place was in flames, they would not have known. He said that he was home when he smelled something burning and inquired of his wife whether it was coming from their house. He said that it was then that they saw the GWI bond in flames.
The livid man said that had the fire destroyed his house, he would not have been able to receive any compensation from GWI. The man said that the fire was burning for over an hour before action was taken to quell the flames.
Speaking at the scene of the fire, Minister of Housing and Water Irfaan Ali said the fire was restricted to the secondary bond, and that the primary bond is where the company kept most of its assets for capital investment works for repairs and maintenance.
“This is the main storage bond for the company. In the compound there is also a secondary bond, at the back of the primary bond. That bond stocks poly hose, bends, sodium hydrochloride and some other PVC fittings that are used on a day to day basis for service connections and upgrades and day to day repairs,” the Minister said.
“The secondary bond is the bond that was affected by the fire. As it is now, it is too early to say anything as to the cause and so on, or to quantify the damage. The store manager has an approximation, but in the morning we will have a full assessment, as the fire service is still fighting the fire,” he said.
Ali said that from all indications, there was a prompt response from the fire service and that contributed greatly to saving the primary storage bond. “But as it is now, most of the secondary storage bond has been destroyed and as I said, later we will have a full assessment of the damage,” he said.
Asked what might have exploded in the bond, CEO of the Guyana Water Inc, Yuri Chandisingh, said that he must await the investigation before he could say. He said that there was nothing in the bond that was likely to self-combust. “But beyond that we can’t speculate. We need to have the experts [complete their investigations,” he said.
“We are just very happy that the fire service was alerted and that major damage was averted,” said Minister Ali. He added that the premises had undergone a safety inspection just two weeks ago.