“Fire! Fire!” – teen recalls hearing as Kitty homes go up in flames

Three houses were completely destroyed while a few others received damages following a fire at Pike Street, Kitty, Georgetown, today. Tragedy struck at around 12:10 hrs on Thursday when 17-year-old Ezekiel Charles of Pike Street, Kitty, Georgetown was studying for his upcoming CSEC exams and heard a loud explosion.

Upon investigating, he saw a nearby house on fire. The blaze quickly spread to two other structures – resulting in their complete destruction.
Speaking with the Guyana times, Charles said he immediately made a call to the Guyana Fire Service upon observing the fire.
“So I was inside my bedroom studying for CXC, because I have CXC coming up on Monday, so I was studying, and then suddenly I heard a loud boom sound, right? And upon hearing it, I didn’t really detect anything, but meanwhile, I heard another boom sound, and then I saw my sister at the window, and I was like, what’s going on? And then she alerted me quickly and was like, ‘Fire! Fire!’ So I quickly ran into my mother’s bedroom and I picked up her phone, and I dialed 912,” the teen stated whilst the house was being gutted.
Meanwhile, he added, “I quickly called, my mother called her firefighter friend, I called again. They asked me what was going on, I told them exactly what, I gave them a brief.”
The student shared that he managed to help three persons escape from harm’s way.
“People were inside the house, but when I saw the man, he had a man and like three old women. So I went downstairs, and I went and assisted them by the fence. I tried to throw the lady over, and I carried them, and I took them in front. And how many houses in total were on fire? How many houses in total? When it started, it was one, and then it continued to be two, now it’s three.”
Other witnesses reported that no one was injured in the inferno; however, some pets were trapped in one of the houses. Several elderly persons had to be rushed out of their homes as a result of the inferno.
Two of the fire trucks reportedly ran out of water in a matter of minutes upon arrival at the fire scene.
Meanwhile, due to the radiated heat, a few other houses received damages as a result of the fire. Several persons whose home were damaged were in tears and visibly upset at the way in which the fire service responded.
Another man, Dexter Smith said, “over and over we have to call for them [Guyana Fire Service] to come here. When they do come, its only a little bit of water that they have in the tanks. We had to throw water to save our own building. What would’ve happened if we didn’t do that?”
He also stated that had it not been for him wetting his own home everything would have been lost. However, not everyone was fortunate as him as others who thought that if the firefighters had acted more swiftly their homes would have been saved.
“We would have lost everything. We have to start covering our own building. We do the same service as everybody else. There’s no one higher than anybody when it comes to disaster. When it comes to disaster, you need to be equipped and modernized yourself.”
An investigation is ongoing to determine the origin of the blaze.