– Fire Chief
CHIEF Fire Officer Marlon Gentle revealed, yesterday, that the Monday blaze, at Eccles, East Bank Demerara, started in a bedroom where an electrical radio malfunctioned.
The 09:00 h disaster left two persons homeless at Lot 129 ‘BB’ First Street, Eccles.
Both occupants were not there when the two-storey concrete building went up in flames but, on their return, 19-year-old Kendra Anthony and Melissa Jordan, 25, were overwhelmed with grief and collapsed in tears.
Neighbours, who first saw the conflagration, were able to save only a sofa from the lower flat, as the entire upper storey, which housed the bedrooms, was reduced to rubble.
The furnishings downstairs were water soaked but that part of the structure remained standing.
The one at Eccles was the second in two days, following a similar occurrence on Sunday, at Zeeburg, West Coast Demerara, where the destruction left seven persons without a home and millions of dollars in losses.
The place, in which the two families lived, also housed an electronic appliances business.
Gentle said that outbreak resulted from a diya, lit for a religious purpose, being left unattended.