Gabourel Lane fire leaves 25 homeless
Over the weekend the night sky was filled with billowing smoke and a blaze of red as fire burned its way through two buildings in Belize City and threatened several others. News 5’s Rick Romero was on Gabourel Lane on Saturday night to capture the dramatic images, and today Marion Ali joined the fire fighters shifting through the ashes looking for answers.
Marion Ali, Reporting
Just after midnight on Saturday, strong winds and dry wood set the stage for disaster, as a fire, believed to have started at number 36 Gabourel Lane, destroyed two historic buildings, damaged two more and left twenty-five people homeless.
The fire department arrived on the scene within minutes, but according to Assistant Fire Chief Ted Smith, the intensity of the blaze caused it to spread quickly.
Ted Smith, Assistant Fire Chief
“The fire was freely burning and it was in the open stage, which means it had already broke from the internal section of the building to the external part. Very shortly after we arrived, another building adjacent to it, number 40, caught fire as a result of the extensive radiant heat. Therefore, we were faced with two buildings on fire, two huge storey wooden structures. The department did its best to contain those fires and extinguished it.”
It was just as the fire fighters were getting ready to leave the scene, another building, belonging to the Baptist Ministry, ignited.
Ted Smith
“At 2:17 we observed and others observed and called to our attention that the Baptist building was engulfed in flames in the upper section, the internal extremely upper section of the building. We immediately tried to deal with that situation as best as we can. Most of our equipment was already being rolled, the truck had already been relocated from the open water source, the sea, so we had to redeploy them back. That took us a couple minutes to reorganize back ourselves and made a defensive fire fighting, and we went solely with defensive fire fighting with that building, trying to contain that fire from going across to the U.S. Embassy. The U.S. Embassy suffered heat damage. At one point the dryer droppings from palm trees in the year caught fire on the roof. They were quick to deal with it with their extinguisher.”
Sister Maria Caritas Lawrence, a resident of Saint Catherine’s Convent, was an eyewitness to the drama.
Sister Maria Caritas Lawrence, Eyewitness
“I was sound asleep and one of the sisters woke me up and said that there was a fire across the street. And when we got up we saw that Waldman’s House, which is almost opposite the convent, was on fire.”
The Fire Department is still investigating the cause of Saturday night’s fire, and the cost of the damages. No one was injured, but Sister Caritas believes a lot of history went up in smoke.
Sr. Maria Caritas Lawrence
“The first building across the street on Gabourel Lane right across from the convent, that was the home of the Jones family, but Mrs. Jones is the daughter of Reverend Cleghorn, who was one of the people who was a Baptist Minister, and they lived in the Baptist Manse. I don’t think that Reverend Cleghorn built the Baptist Manse, but Mrs. Jones would say and the family thinks that, that house is over two hundred years old, so it was before the establishment of the Queen Street Baptist Church.”
Until a new building can be found, worship for church members will resume at temporary facilities on an empty lot near the New Administration Building on Mahogany Street. Marion Ali for News 5.
At news time tonight, the cause of the fire had yet to be determined.
