Fire Destroys House in Corozal Days Before Christmas
A family in Corozal lost everything to a house fire on Sunday morning. The fire was caused by a malfunctioning fan in one of the bedrooms. Despite the family’s attempts to contain the situation, the flames quickly spread and the house was consumed by fire. Today, Normita Centeno and her family are picking up the pieces. Hipolito Novelo reports.
Hipolito Novelo, Reporting
Normita Centeno
Normita Centeno, Fire Victim
“All I could have done was just cry and I was in shock. My son, he was also in shock. We just couldn’t believe it.”
For forty-two-year-old Normita Centeno, in the days leading up to Christmas Day, she’ll be working on getting herself and her family back on their feet.
Normita Centeno
“But everything was already blazing on fire, nothing we could have done to try save or to, everything was already burning.”
The Centeno family lost everything in a fire that broke out at around one o’clock on Sunday morning in Corozal Town. Centeno was sleeping in her room when she realized that smoke was coming from her son’s bedroom.
Normita Centeno
“It seems like the fan stopped working and it get heated up. And his mattress was beside it. So I guess that was what caused the flame, the fire to start. He didn’t not even notice that he was on fire, the house was on fire, because if he didn’t feel the heat was burning his foot, he wouldn’t have wake up. When he wake up, I mean, the mattress was already quarter of the mattress on fire. I was sleeping and I just, I just woke up, I don’t know, I just woke up and I saw the flame already. So I ran out in his room and he was trying to out the fire on himself. He was so shocked that he not even bother calling or yell saying, Mom, we have fire or nothing.”
Centeno and her nineteen-year-old son then attempted to douse the flames. However, the fire began to spread quickly. They then concentrated their efforts on saving what they could from the burning house.
Normita Centeno
“The first thing that ran through my mind is that just get a bucket that we had with water to out it. We tried to take out the mattress to pull it outside, but we had another mattress on the bottom and the one on the top for we had a double. We couldn’t so I went to pull a hose to try out it and by the time we came in the tree mattress was already on fire I got so lost for a minute that I saw everything blazing that I just ran outside and I run to the lane I came back when I reacted before that I started screaming and yelling for the neighbors to call the fire engine. And when I reacted I came back to cut the tank that we had outside to, so it couldn’t explode. The washing machine we had on the side also outside, we managed to save that, and the motorcycle.”
That’s all that was saved: a washing machine, a gas tank, a motorcycle, and the clothes on their backs. Everything else was destroyed and is now sitting on the street side, waiting to be picked up by garbage collectors. And as Centeno visited where she once lived, she questioned what sort of Christmas her family would have this year.
Normita Centeno
“It was an ugly feeling. I couldn’t believe that. Second, the room was already on flame. Everything was just burning. And we couldn’t do nothing. Nothing. All I could have done is cry, cry. I was in shock. My son was in shock. We just couldn’t believe it, and when the fire engine came, they didn’t took long, like 10 minutes they were here already responding. But everything was already blazing on fire, nothing we could have done to try save or to, everything was already burning.”
Reporting for News Five, I am Hipolito Novelo.
If you would like to help Centeno and her family, you can contact her at six-seven-three-one-one-nine-two.
