Devon Beckles, the owner of Bolo and Sons Enterprise, blames the Guyana Fire Service for not containing the fire which gutted his store and another building in Bartica on Monday night.
In a telephone interview, the 41-year-old Beckles relayed the details of the night when the general store he has owned for 20 years was completely gutted along with the Morocco Hotel and expressed his dissatisfaction with the fire service’s response to the fire even though they arrived on time.
He said that he was alerted to the fire at around 10:21 pm and arrived at the scene about ten minutes later. “When I meet there, the fire service was there. They done break into the back door, [So] I kick open the glass door in front and bring them into the building from the front. Then I go and I get some flashlights because they didn’t have no light, no respirators, nothing at all. They didn’t really go in the building but I give them access from the front,” he said. The store proprietor then added that after helping the fire fighters, he went into the office area of the building, which was not yet touched by the fire. “I went into the office and took out my documents and so forth. I start throwing water and soaking up the office area you know because there was no fire in there,” he said before adding that when the fire started it was not big and was only in one part of the building.
