HGP Nightly News – A devastating fire tore through a multi-room apartment building at the corner of Cummings and Fifth Streets in Alberttown on Tuesday evening, reducing the structure to a gutted shell in less than an hour and leaving dozens of residents, most of them Spanish-speaking, with nowhere to go.
The Guyana Fire Service received the distress call at approximately 6:45pm, and by their own account, the first appliances were on the scene in under five minutes. Divisional Officer of Operations for A Division, Andrew Holder, confirmed that a total of four fire appliances responded to the scene, three from headquarters and one pulled in from Eccles, with roughly 25 firefighters deployed in total.
What they found on arrival painted an alarming picture. “The entire building, especially the top floor, was well alight,” Holder said, making clear that by the time the Fire Service arrived, the blaze had already taken a firm and ferocious hold.
With flames consuming the upper floors and the risk of the fire jumping to neighbouring structures very real, firefighters immediately made containing the spread their top priority. That task, Holder noted, was successfully achieved, a critical outcome given the building’s location just two doors away from the headquarters of DHL and a popular shipping company, both of which were directly in harm’s way.
As firefighters worked to hold the line, DHL employees were seen rushing in and out of their offices, frantically removing what they described as important documents and consignments in a desperate race to salvage critical materials before the heat and smoke made that impossible.
Residents and onlookers gathered on the street, watching helplessly as the building that many had called home burned. There was nothing to do but stand and watch as the structure that had housed around 50 to 57 apartments was devoured by the flames in under sixty minutes. By the time the fire was brought under control, the building had been gutted entirely, and firefighters shifted into what Holder described as mopping up mode.
The human cost of Tuesday evening’s fire remains unclear. “I cannot say, as of this moment, how many persons are affected,” Holder acknowledged, reflecting the chaos and uncertainty that surrounded the scene in the immediate aftermath. What is known is that the building was home to dozens of residents, and that for all of them, Tuesday night changed everything in the space of an hour.
An investigation into the cause of the fire will be launched by the Fire Prevention Department on Wednesday morning, with Holder confirming that findings are expected to be made available once that process is complete.
