Linden blaze may have been started by children
– Fire Chief
FIRE Chief Marlon Gentle said yesterday that the fire at Lot 774 One Mile, Wismar, Linden, which completely destroyed a dwelling house on Sunday, may have started as a result of unsupervised children playing with matches. He was reporting on the conflagration which occurred about 12:01hrs while some of the occupants of both flats were at home.
A total of 15 persons resided in the wood and concrete two-storey, and the blaze originated in the top flat of the building but quickly spread to other parts of the house leaving a blackened pile of debris.
Gentle said the Guyana Fire Service (GFS) tender based at Mackenzie was dispatched upon receipt of the distress call but, by then, the edifice was already engulfed in flames.
He added that there was some difficulty in sourcing water for the tender before the flames were doused and prevented from spreading to nearby buildings.
Gentle said the bottom flat of the destroyed premises housed four persons and the top 11, including children.
He said the GFS is continuously urging persons, especially adults, to supervise children and not leave them unattended, in the effort to prevent fires.
Meanwhile, in a separate incident, Gentle said that a major disaster was averted when a tractor which caught afire on Sunday night, at Providence, East Bank Berbice, was quickly put out.
The engine compartment of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) vehicle, from Rose Hall Estate, was, however, badly damaged.