FIRE-FIGHTERS were late yesterday trying to determine the cause of a fire which destroyed a two-storey residential building in Cummings Street, Alberttown, shortly after 14:30 hrs, leaving millions in losses.

The building, owned by overseas-based Guyanese, Elsa Phillips, was destroyed.
No one was in the building at the time that the fire broke out. Caretaker Ingrid Grant, who lives at Fifth Street, Alberttown, wept bitterly on learning that her friend’s home was on fire.

Grant recalled that around mid afternoon she had just finished cleaning the house and had gone across to a nearby Internet café in Cummings Street when she looked out and noticed people running helter skelter. She said she became curious and ran out of the building to find out what was going on. On learning that a house was on fire, she looked up and saw and smoke and flames and it was coming from the direction of Elsa Phillips’ home.

By the time she ran to the building it was well alight, and all she could have done was watch helplessly as her friend’s property was reduced to rubble.
She related that the house was well-furnished,
With a storeroom at the back with barrels her friend had posted home from time to time.
Asked about the possibility of the fire being of electrical origin, or if a stove was left unattended,  she stressed that absolutely nothing was left on, as  she had left the house for the day.

Grant said that Phillips is expected in Guyana within a week, also said that they communicated by phone regularly.

Grant has been caretaker of the building since last year and said no one lived there.

Meanwhile, in a flurry, neighbours in adjacent buildings, all constructed in close proximity to each other, rushed about removing valuables from their homes.
Phillips’ home was among four destroyed by fire over the last three days. On Saturday, the home of Paulette Thom-Francis and family, of Linden, was destroyed by fire. Around 20:00hrs that same evening, a two storey building housing a Fish Shop on D’Urban Street went up in flames; and yesterday afternoon, firefighters were mopping up their firefighting activities at a dwelling at Vigilance, East Coast Demerara, from where they were called to respond to the Phillips’ fire in Alberttown.

Residents at the scene of the Cummings Street fire yesterday expressed gratitude to the firefighters for the expert manner in which they worked, containing the fire to the one building when so many others were close by.