By Shauna Jemmott

TWO business premises at Central Mahaicony, East Coast Demerara have been destroyed by a fire which struck just before midnight on Saturday, leaving in its wake millions of dollars in losses.The interior sections of the adjoining buildings which housed the Golden Phoenix Chinese Restaurant and Laleeta’s Wholesale and Retail Grocery Store received the brunt of the damage inflicted by the fire.

The damaged buildings were owned by businesswoman Laleeta Persaud of Fellowship, Mahaicony, East Coast Demerara, who had rented one section to the Chinese restaurant owners.

When the Guyana Chronicle visited the area on Sunday, Persaud was not there. She was reportedly in Georgetown at her church. Her daughter, Shivanie Robertson, told this publication that family members were at home on Saturday evening when they received a telephone call from a wholesale customer informing them that the building was ablaze.
Robertson said the customer, who is a vendor at the nearby Mahaicony market, said she and other vendors heard an explosion and immediately observed a fire burning inside the restaurant. The vendors raised an alarm, notifying police at the Mahaicony Police Station, who telephoned the Guyana Fire Service.

“All they saw was flames coming from the back of ‘Chinee’,” the woman told the Guyana Chronicle.

Robertson said the family travelled immediately to the scene, and saw that the fire had already engulfed the Chinese restaurant and was well into the grocery store.

The Guyana Fire Service reportedly arrived 15 minutes after being called, and managed to put out the blaze.

Investigators told the family the fire started in the Chinese restaurant as a result of a gas stove which was left lit in the building. The Chinese family, which also resides in the building, was not at home at the time of the fire. They would visit the casino in Georgetown on Saturday nights, and would return and open the restaurant on Sundays. They have since not returned to the building, this newspaper was told.

“We can’t find them; nobody didn’t come. We searched the building this morning, and nobody was in there. Every single thing burned on their side. Millions of dollars gone down the drain,” Robertson told the Guyana Chronicle.

Pointing to a stockpile of grocery at the family’s home, the woman said, “The whole front (of Laleeta’s Grocery) started to ketch afire. This is what we were able to get out, and everything else is just ashes.”

She said the grocery store also sells coking gas, but miraculously, “none didn’t explode”.

She credited the Guyana Fire Service with preventing total destruction of the building: “The firefighters did the best they could. They helped us save a lot,” Robertson said.

She related that her mother started the business about four years ago, and though the loss was a big blow to her mother, she is confident that her mother would pick herself up and try again.

Robertson said her mother previously owned a family business with her ex-husband, but left everything with her father after they had divorced. She built the business from scratch, and was already able to secure a home, the business place, four trucks and a BMW.

“She (her mother) is a strong woman. She don’t fall on her face like that,” Robertson told the Guyana Chronicle.