FOUR families are now homeless following a fire which ripped through Barby Dam — a low-income squatter settlement on the Joint Services/Kaikan embankment in the North Ruimveldt area — around 20:00h on Friday night, leaving most of them with only the clothes on their backs.

‘Barby Dam’ at the height of the fire Friday night (Photo by Sonell Nelson)

Those rendered destitute are: Denise Warrick and her family of five (including a 15-month-old baby) in whose home the fire reportedly started; Earlene Dover, a Stabroek Market fruit vendor and her family of four; Penny Wilson and her three-year-old daughter; and Courtney Booker, a security guard of Cops Security Service. Warrick, 28, is a member of the Supernumerary arm of the Guyana Police Force.

The fire, fanned by the Atlantic breeze wafting across that section of coastal Georgetown, quickly spread from Warrick’s home to other buildings in the neighbourhood.

But quick thinking on the part of the firemen led them to push two of the buildings (one to the east and another to the west) into a trench behind them, so as to prevent the fire from spreading further.

When the fire started, none of the owners/heads of household were at home. They were all at work, except for Penny Wilson, who had gone to a nearby shop in Kaikan Street, taking her infant daughter with her.

The houses on the dam have no electricity, and neighbours claim that a child in Warrick’s house lit a candle to illuminate the building. That candle might have been the source of the fire, they surmise. The oldest person in the home at the time is around 13 years of age.

Two members of the Tactical Services Unit on duty at the entrance to the Joint Services Scheme, namely Constables Gonsalves-Sabola and Blair, on learning of the fire, quickly alerted the fire department, which in turn also responded promptly.

However, as on previous occasions, the firemen’s progress was severely hampered by the presence of a huge padlocked steel gate between Lamaha Park and Lamaha Springs.

In the absence of the chained and padlocked gate, the fire tender would have been able to travel through Guyhoc Park and Lamaha Park to access Lamaha Springs from whence it was much easier and faster to fight the fire.

Kaikan Street residents also claimed that the fire tender initially had problems finding the source of the fire from that ward, which is bigger and much more complicated. Once parked in Lamaha Springs, however, they were able to settle down to using water from the trench in that neighbourhood to douse the fire.

As news of the fire spread, screaming heads of household raced down to the scene, while other residents took the badly traumatised children into their homes. Initially, they attempted to douse the flames with trench water, but that was no match for the fire. Neighbours said that Warrick’s children panicked and ran out of the burning building. They were not able to save anything; Wilson and Booker, too, lost everything. However, Dover, whose children were at home when the fire broke, managed to save a few pieces of furniture, with the help of neighbours.

Dover tearfully lamented that she had also lost about $100,000 in cash in the blaze, which was money she had been saving to deposit on the purchase of a house-lot on which to build a permanent home.

The residents of Darby Dam, most of whom had been living on the squatter embankment for more than eight years, were last week given 30 days in which to dismantle their homes so that the Joint Services embankment could be cleared.

Unfortunately for those families affected by the fire, their birth certificates and other forms of identification and other documentation requested by the Ministry of Housing were all destroyed.

Meanwhile, with the fire taking place soon after the Christmas holidays, some families, having entered into hire purchase agreements, must now depend on the insurance to relieve them of the burden of paying for furniture from which they can no longer benefit.

Warrick, in whose home the fire reportedly started, had only moved into the house a few days before Christmas. The house was owned by one Abiola Edinboro who no longer lives in the neighbourhood.