Police have launched an investigation into the suspected arson of a two-storey wooden and concrete house at Lot 183 Middle Road, La Penitence, Georgetown, which occurred at about 14:00hrs on Sunday and has left two persons homeless.
The fire reportedly started while the owner of the building, Colin Clarke, was eating mangoes in front of his two-storey house.
The man told Guyana Times that while he was standing in front of his yard, he noticed smoke coming from behind the house but wasn’t alarmed “because [I] didn’t think it was coming from [my] home.” However, as time passed and the smoke got thicker, he walked towards the entrance of his home but found that it was blocked by the blazing fire.
He explained that he tried with all his might to enter the home in order to retrieve his licensed shotgun, since, according to him, he feared it would “go off” if the fire touched it.
He asserted that he tried with all his might, but could not find the gun; moreover, he said he could save nothing in the home.
He therefore called the Fire Service and simultaneously alerted his neighbours. Public-spirited persons formed a bucket brigade in an attempt to save his home, the distraught man said, but even though the Guyana Fire Service worked diligently in this regard, his home was completely destroyed by the disastrous blaze.
“My wife and I had just returned from church, and she left to go by her mother, as we are celebrating two birthdays in the family.
So I parked my car and stood outside at the fence, and I was eating a mango when I noticed the smoke. I wasn’t worried at first, but then I noticed the smoke getting thick and I she, ‘This is fire!’” Clarke relayed.
