A MID-AFTERNOON fire on Monday ravaged the home of five occupants living at Lot 67 Front Road, West Ruimveldt, just yards away from the West Ruimveldt Fire Station.
The five occupants living in the house were husband and wife, Travis and Malinda Reid; their two children aged three and seven years and Malinda’s brother, Trevon Pitt.

While no one was at home at the time, Malinda was the one who received a call from her neighbour who told her that her house was on fire, after which she related the message to her husband and they hurried to the scene. When the Guyana Chronicle arrived, the wooden house was flattened in its centre with only its charred outer frames remaining.
Firemen from the neighbouring station, as well as the Central Fire Station, were seen utilising water from a nearby fire hydrant to suppress the existing smoke.

Questioned about the items that were lost Malinda said: “A lot. I can’t even estimate it, a lot! Everything that a home has, I had. My house wasn’t short of anything. As much as I’m just standing here, it’s really affecting me but what can I do? I have to thank God that I’m alive and nobody was in there.”

One of the firemen on the scene told the Guyana Chronicle that the fire truck arrived with enough water as it could hold. “There was water available and as they say, the truck wouldn’t be able to put the actual fire out, it would be able to cool it down for a certain time. It depends on the amount of water that is in the truck.

That is why we had to end up using the hydrant so that we could get adequate water to out the fire completely,” he said.
Asked about the time it took for the nearby fire service to arrive, the fireman said: “Our response time was good because if we didn’t have good response time the fire would have been hitting the two houses nearby.”

At the same time, residents of the home maintain that there were no electrical appliances left plugged in after they left, and that they know of no person with a motive to commit arson on their home.

Malinda says that her only hope is to receive other copies of the documents she had completed with the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA), for a new ready-made home she recently secured at Perseverance, East Bank Demerara.

“What I’d like to know is if Housing would give me back my papers because I received the document only last month. The document is burnt. We got through with a house in Perseverance. It was just for us to get the loan and move in…All I need is the document back, that’s all I’m asking,” she told reporters. The family would have lost other documents such as their birth certificates, marriage certificates and passports.

Malinda is currently a Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) Invigilator while her husband works at the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and her brother is a Guyana Defence Force (GDF) soldier.