AN East Berbice, Corentyne family of five is in a state of shock and disbelief, after being forced to watch helplessly as their life’s savings went up in flames on Thursday.

The Jaundoos, of Ankerville, Port Mourant,

were rendered speechless as their residence, from which they also did business, was reduced to a rubble following a fire of unknown origin a little after noon on Thursday.

According to Tejpattie Jaundoo, the proprietor, she was downstairs

when she heard a strange noise coming from the upper flat of the two-storey wooden and concrete building.

“I was downstairs and meh hear a crackling sound then like something popping,” she said. “Suh meh run upstairs to see what was happenin’, and when me reach, is one big ball ah fire by de bedroom.”

The woman, who seemed to be still in a daze as she spoke, recalled freezing momentarily before grabbing the three children that were home at the time, two of whom are toddlers, and screaming for help as she ran out of the house, without even stopping to grab anything of value.

Luckily for her, neighbours and kind passersby rushed to her aid by forming a bucket brigade to help quell the blaze, that had by then become a raging inferno, fuelled no doubt by the many flammable items housed in the grocery store on the lower flat.

Everyone would breathe a sigh of relief when the fire tender from the Rose Hall Fire Station arrived, but that relief was short-lived, as the firemen would encounter several problems, the first of which was accessing  water from the nearby trench.

And when that little problem seemed to have been resolved, the water pump refused to start, thus necessitating the use of a secondary pump, which had to be powered by a generator that suddenly experienced mechanical failure.

Residents, however, were very cooperative and industrious, and managed to use their own pumps, pressure washers and buckets to help stop the fire from spreading to two neighbouring houses.

A short while later, a fire tender from New Amsterdam arrived, followed by a smaller one from the Albion Estate, but by then the entire building was already flattened.

Speaking briefly with the media at the scene was the Divisional Commander of the Guyana Fire Service, Hemchandra Persaud, who commended the residents for saving the neighbouring houses. He noted that while the cause of the fire was unknown, from all indications, it appeared to have originated in a bedroom on the upper flat.

The building, which was powered entirely by solar energy, is valued over $22M. The grocery business was added to the lower flat a little over a year ago. Investigations are ongoing.