A septuagenarian along with his granddaughter and two great grandchildren are now homeless following a fire which completely engulfed and destroyed their two-storey home and shop at LBI yesterday afternoon.
According to reports, the family’s home located at Lot 99 Onion Field, La Bonne Intention (LBI) East Coast Demerara (ECD) home went up in flames at approximately 1:00pm yesterday while the 70-year-old Dhanpaul (only name) was asleep in the top flat of the house.
The man told this newspaper that he went to his son-in-law’s house, a street away, and when he returned home he decided to take a nap.
But, he said when he entered the home, the place was unusually hot. Dhanpaul added that he decided to make a check inside of his great grandchildren’s bedroom when he discovered the fire but in his intoxicated state he fell asleep.
Sometime afterwards, Dhanpaul said he recollects someone shouting, “fire! fire! You house on fire.”
The cause of the fire is unknown and Dhanpaul said though his eight and six-year-old great grandchildren would play with matches at times in the home, he doubted that to be the cause of the fire, since the children were at school during the time of the fire.
“I was at work when I got a call after 1:00pm about the fire,” Roseanne Gobin, Dhanpaul’s granddaughter and mother of the two children said. He complained of having lost everything in the fire.
The woman said she had only recently bought school textbooks for her children which she lost in the fire. The losses in the fire cannot be estimated, according to Gobin.
By last night, Dhanpaul had gone to stay with his sister and Gobin and her two children went to stay with her aunt.
Investigations into the fire are ongoing.
