A primary school teacher, Renita Joseph, her husband and their two young children – ages 10 and three – are now homeless after a fire of unknown origin destroyed their two-storey house at Good Intent, West Bank Demerara.
The fire started sometime after 03:00h on Thursday while the family was asleep; they barely made it out of the house alive.
“We were all sleeping and it [the fire] was approaching my room, which is the first room in the house and I saw the big flame and I just was able to grab my daughter and run out of the house from the back door,” Joseph told the News Room.
She explained that her husband and their 10-year-old son was sleeping in a room at the back of the house; it was only when she safely made it outside that she realised they were still in the house.
Joseph said she began shouting for them until they woke up and ran to safety. The family was not able to save anything. While the Guyana Fire Service arrived promptly at the scene and managed to extinguish the fire, the house and everything inside were already destroyed.
Joseph is pursuing a degree in education at the University of Guyana. She told the News Room that she is in her final year and so she lost all her research in the fire.
“It will have a terrible impact on me and my son because he is in school as well. All of our resources would have been destroyed, my computer which has all of my UG stuff….I was working on my research and I wasn’t able to save anything so I don’t know if I will be able to complete UG,” Joseph said.
The Guyana Police Force and Fire Service continue to investigate the cause of the fire.
