Bath woman in Christmas morning blaze dies

A young mother who was admitted to the Georgetown Public Hospital after she suffered burns about her body on Christmas morning, succumbed to her injuries on Tuesday.

Twenty-four-year-old Carol Sibdhanie, a mother of two, of Bath Settlement, West Coast Berbice, was badly burnt just before 7 am and her reputed husband Pooran Ramjattan sustained injuries to his left hand after he tried to put out the flames. The couple was rushed to the Fort Wellington Hospital before being sent to the New Amsterdam (NA) Hospital where they were treated for burns. Sibdhanie was transferred to the Georgetown Hospital while Ramjattan was sent home.

Sibdhanie reportedly told doctors at the NA Hospital that the gas stove flared up on her but Ramjattan believes that she burnt herself after they had had an argument on Christmas Eve night. He said they argued again for about two minutes on Christmas morning then he left the house to use the pit latrine. Shortly after Ramjattan said he heard a neighbour shouting that there was fire in his house. He said he ran out of the toilet and saw Sibdhanie ablaze and immediately tried to put out the fire with his left hand. The man said he stripped off her nightgown and threw it aside. “But the fire start fuh catch on the house and me had to throw water and out it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sibdhanie ran out of the house naked and screaming and neighbours ran and covered her with a sheet then called a taxi to take her and Ramjattan to the hospital. The couple’s children, three-year-old Levon and one-year-old Adrian were left in the care of Ramjattan’s mother Sattie.