Southside spared as firemen contain blaze

While the weekend promised to be filled with festivities, a fire Saturday night on George Street put a damper on one family’s celebration. The upstairs house was rented by Gilberto Rivas and his family of four, while the lower flat was occupied by the aunt of Karl Wade, the owner of the house. Neighbors saw smoke coming out of the lower flat and told Rivas of the danger below him. Rivas then entered the lower flat and rescued the elderly lady who was dazed from smoke inhalation. Soon after Rivas got her out, the entire house was engulfed in flames.

Norris Fisher, Assistant Fire Chief

“On Saturday at 8:15 p.m., we received a call at the station about a house fire at 47 George Street. We responded immediately with three trucks and we met a lot of obstacles, traffic wise along the way, traveling down Central American Boulevard and Cemetery Road, to George Street. We arrived there at 8:20 and we proceeded directly to attack the fire and it was under control within the first ten minutes. When we got there, there fire was concentrated to the rear of the house, on both the bottom and the upper flat. We had it extinguished totally by 9:25. What happened, was that after we got it under control, we had people that went inside and they did the internal work until it was properly out and then we did the same thing downstairs.”

Rivas’ loss was estimated at ten thousand dollars and the house was not insured.