AN EARLY Sunday morning fire has completely destroyed 59-year-old Emella Chesney’s two-storey home at Manchester Village, Corentyne, East Berbice.Five persons are now homeless, and nothing was removed from the blazing building. No one was at home at the time of the fire. Ms. Chesney said she was in church when she learnt of the blaze, and reportedly collapsed when she saw the raging flames.

“Everything was off,” she contends. “I even cooked before I went to church, and (I) turned off everything. This is a sad thing to see what you build destroy in front of your eyes,” she told the Guyana Chronicle.

The fire is believed to have stated in Chesney’s bedroom in the upper flat of the building. She related that there were two other fires in May and June of 2016, but they were extinguished. Both, she said, had started in the upper flat of the house.

Thirty-five-year-old Shaundacy Deen, one of Chesney’s daughters, who lives two villages away, said she had seen thick smoke billowing in the air, and when she went to investigate where it was coming from, she discovered that her mother’s home was on fire.

“We quickly tried to form a bucket brigade because there was water in
front from the trench, but we were unable to save (the house) as (the fire) quickly spread,” she detailed to this publication.

Fire tenders reportedly took some time to arrive on scene. “I call New Amsterdam, and when I call Rose Hall them phone ring out; and when they finally arrived, everything destroy,” Chesney told the Guyana Chronicle.

An investigation has been launched to determine the cause of the fire.