Deadly Mocha fire: House had illegal electricity connection – Min Benn

Even as Police continue to conduct investigations into the circumstances surrounding the deadly fire that claimed the lives of three children at Barnwell North, Mocha Arcadia, East Bank Demerara (EBD), Home Affairs Minister Robeson Benn has revealed that the house in which the children perished had an illegal electricity connection.

This, he related, might have been the reason for the deadly inferno.
After sifting through the debris at the fire scene at Barnwell North, aback Mocha on the East Bank of Demerara, the Fire Service has concluded that the fire was electrical in origin. However, the GFS is said to be awaiting test results to definitively confirm this position.
There were doubts about the Fire Service’s reports since, initially, it was claimed that the house had no electricity. There were also suspicions that the former boyfriend of the children’s mother might have started the fire, since he reportedly was abusive and would often threaten to kill her.
However, Home Affairs Minister Robeson Benn told reporters on Wednesday that the fire was indeed electrical in nature.
“That electricity was being taken from a powerline I guess unauthorised, and the identification by the investigation from the Fire Service experts is that it (fire) was electrical in nature,” he has said.
Minister Benn said more should be done to protect buildings and lives, especially the lives of children around the country.
“Our children are our future, our embodiment, our glorification as individuals, as parents, and as a country. We should develop what we hand over to our children, and what they can further build for our country. So, again, while we talk about the problem, the loss at Mocha, and that area; and while again (we) express publicly our condolences and advise that we’re bringing responses and aid to the families and all those concerns, we have to use that tragedy as a reminder as to what we need to do to protect the loss of life due to fire.”

Brothers, eight-year-old Timothy and six-year-old Trayshon Kippins, and sister, one-year-old Zhlia Flue, lost their lives in the fire which occurred during the wee hours of May 26.
Tracy Flue, the children’s mother, was pulling a night shift at her security job to make ends meet for her family when she received the news that her house was on fire with her three children trapped inside.
The Guyana Fire Service (GFS) was alerted to the fire immediately after it started, and fire tenders were dispatched to the scene.
Firefighters were forced to go to the burning house on foot because the terrain could not afford them to drive.