Fire destroys Orange Walk bar

An Orange Walk woman is hospitalised tonight after being burned in an early morning fire. Twenty-year-old Aledes Ulloa, a Honduran national, says she was sleeping in one of the cabanas on the compound of the Rio Adventures Bar when she was awakened by intense heat and the strong smell of smoke. Ulloa told authorities she saw that the bar was on fire, but that as she ran out of her room, ashes fell on her hands, and back. Ulloa was rushed to the Northern Regional Hospital where she remains in a stable condition. According to the National Fire Service, when they arrived on the scene the building was already engulfed in flames and there was nothing that could be done to save the building other than to prevent the flames from spreading to nearby cabanas. Fire authorities say at this time they do not know what started the fire. The bar, valued at eighty thousand dollars, was owned by forty-one year old Charlie Reyes. It was not insured. Three months ago Reyes suffered a similar loss when three of his cabanas at the same location were destroyed by fire.