By Ariana Gordon

A FAMILY of nine is now homeless following a fire that completely destroyed their two-storey house located at 237 Old Road Parika, East Bank Essequibo, (EBE) on Thursday night.According to Samantha Johnson, an occupant of the lower flat of the property, the fire may have started around 20:00hrs. She told the Guyana Chronicle that she left the house at approximately 19:00hrs to travel to Georgetown to watch one of her daughters play football at the Square of the Revolution.

Johnson said she was on the Demerara Harbour Bridge when she received a call from a relative who lives at De Kinderen, West Coast Demerara (WCD), informing her of the fire. She said she did not take her relative seriously and asked her to stop making light of such situations.
“She called me and asked me aunty you are at home? I said, no, I am not at home we are going to football because ladies tournament football started…She said aunty I heard your house burning down… I told her to stop making all those jokes and she said no.”
The woman, who was in the front seat of a minibus heading to the city, said shortly after speaking with the relative, her daughters’ phones rang and they too were informed of the tragedy.
Johnson could not state what happened after she left her home but told this newspaper that there was no one in the bottom flat of the house after she and her children left for Georgetown.
“I have two daughters, a niece and a husband. Nobody wasn’t downstairs at the time, but my cousin was upstairs at the time; she, her husband and her two children were,” Johnson said as tears flowed from her eyes freely.
She said, “I cannot say what happened, I wasn’t at home,” while noting that it is possible that the fire was electrical in nature. The distraught 38-year-old woman recalled that on Tuesday her 15,000-volt stabilizer caught fire, but said the issue was not reported to the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) corporation.
“We get electrical problems… that happened on Tuesday – my 15,000-volt stabilizer from the wall itself, it start fire but we pull it out and I didn’t call GPL because we were busy Tuesday, Wednesday and then this fire happened yesterday.”
When asked to quantify her losses, Johnson said she was not in a position to so do, but described her loss as “a great one.”
“I had everything in my home…because I cook and sell, I bake cake, icing cake for people and everything just went up.”
She is unsure of her future, but said her daughters will stay with their father until she and her husband decide on the way forward.
Meanwhile, contrary to rumours that have been circulating, Johnson made it clear that no relative of hers or her husband were in police custody as a result of suspected arson.
“Nobody is not in police custody…I went to the police station…I was there and nobody was there,” she told the Guyana Chronicle.