False alarm: First responders from the Guyana Fire Service (GFS) searching the remains of a house that collapsed at First Street, Campbellville on Wednesday after it was reported to them that a mother and her son had been in the building. However, it was later discovered that no one was in the property at the time of its collapse. “We received a call that a structure had collapsed and two persons were said to be in the structure. On arrival with the first appliance, those first responders….began searching manually and then we managed to get the aid of an equipment from a private contractor to remove some of the overburden. When that overburden was in place of removing, we got a phone call that the persons [were] not in the structure but [were] with some relative, so we were able to account for both persons who were residing there”, Divisional Officer for the GFS Gregory Wickham said. It was noted that the first set of calls made to the woman’s cellphone went unanswered, which saw the firefighters continuing their search until the phone was finally answered and it was confirmed that neither of the occupants was at home. Not many persons at the scene were happy with the way the search was being carried out. Several men could be overheard saying that with the rash way the excavator was pulling the rotted walls apart, the occupants could have been injured had they been in the debris. The men also criticised the sloth of the firemen in moving whatever they could by hand.
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