A FIRE believed to be of electrical origin has devoured the home of construction worker Brian London and his security guard wife Merle at Lot 197 Fourth Street, Block 20 Haslington, East Coast Demerara shortly after noon yesterday, completely wiping out all the middle-aged couple had acquired after years of saving and sacrifice.The couple had, thankfully, managed to whisk three toddlers out of the building to safety; but the fire left nothing of the building or their other hard earned possessions, and they and their six children are now left homeless and destitute.

Weeping bitterly, Merle told the Chronicle that the fire started at about 13:00 hrs. She recalled being in the house with her three youngest children — while the others were at work and school — when she heard a sparking sound outside, and looked up only to see the wires leading to the house sparking. Merle said she did not take it very seriously, because it was not the first time that phenomenon had occurred. “It does happen, cause sometimes the voltage does low and sometimes it high, and other times it would spark,” Merle related.

But on this occasion, as it sparked, the fire began running towards the house, and in an instant the house was ablaze! In a frenzy, she grabbed the children up and ran through the door with them.

At about the same time, her husband said, he and a friend were walking into the street from work when he looked ahead and saw a house being devoured by fire. He said he immediately recognised that it was his home that was alight, and he hastened to get there. “I run through the backdoor and pushed it open, but by then meh wife had already run outside with the children,” Brian recounted.

Fanned by the mid-afternoon sea breeze blowing with considerable force from across the Atlantic, the flames angrily demolished the house, reducing it to rubble in record time.

“We couldn’t save nothing; everything burn!” the distraught Merle related.

The house was their personal property, and they had been living in it for the last ten years, Mr London said.

Family members could only sit disconsolately on a neighbour’s stairway across the road and weep bitterly as the fire raged.

One of the children, a boy presumed to be in the NGSA (Common Entrance) class, was coming home when other children in the street met him and alerted him to the disaster. On arriving at the neighbour’s yard, he threw himself onto his mother and literally screamed.

Asked what would be their next move, and where they were going to spend the night, the couple shook their heads in grief, indicating that they had nowhere to go, nothing to eat; and the only clothes they had were those on their backs.

“All we clothes burn; all we documents, money, everything! The fire just carry all,” Merle said dolefully.

Meanwhile the Guyana Relief Council was alerted, and promised to visit the family soonest.

By Shirley Thomas