Fire leaves Belize City family homeless

Most people were sound asleep when the fire alarm was sounded in the Conch Shell Bay area this morning, and by the time the smoke had cleared, three small wooden structures were no more. Jacqueline Woods reports.

The peace and quiet of Conch Shell Bay was interrupted early this morning, as seven members of the Coote family desperately fought to save their homes from raging flames.

Wifred Coote, Fire Victim

“It’s a bad feeling; it’s a bad feeling man to watch it go up in smoke everything going in smoke.”

Perline Coote, Fire Victim

“We can’t build this by ourself again; we can’t. I no in a work. I use to work at Salvation Army but I must have gotten too old, retired now, old age, you know. I’m sixty, you know.”

Q: “For the time being where are you staying.”

Perline Coote

“We no know. We no have nowhere to stay, we no sleep from last night.”

Tired and frustrated, the sixty year old grandmother says she just doesn’t see how the family will recover from their loss. Coote says she was first awaken by what sounded like gas escaping from a tank and that when she looked outside of her one bedroom house, the nearby main family residence was already engulfed in flames.

Perline Coote

“I get up and when I get through the door, the whole house under fire, beside this big house you know. And I talk to my husband and I say, “Fire! Fire! Fire!”. You know like that and then we get out. It was too late.”

Q: “You all couldn’t save anything?”

Perline Coote

“It was too late. Couldn’t save it cause it was down by the kitchen, you know and our bedroom is right down by the kitchen. Too much fire, too much heat, couldn’t save nothing because if we had gotten in there, we never would have come out. We would have been trap because then the tank was already speeding up already, so we couldn’t save nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. We tried to pitch water on it, but when they throw the water on it, it just like more gas to it, but the water just dry out and the pipe is not functioning so, it was not sufficient for that.”

As some of the family members tried to put the fire out, Coote says she was also concerned for the safety of her ailing mother, who lived in the third building to the back.

Perline Coote

“She say, she no want to come out, you know, she get excited and she sick and… But they put her through the back window and that is how she get saved from the fire.”

Also saved from the raging flames were a number of other wooden houses in the congested area.

Wilfred Coote

“All that time we trying to try to stop the fire from getting out, but we couldn’t due to the breeze was blowing south easterly breeze and direct towards the little kitchen that was there. Then it catch the other house to the back there and when the pump come, with the tank. It had no water, no water in the tank. They had to go all the way round the side to the bridge to get water to come back here.”

The family has appealed to the public for assistance, and in the meantime has sought refuge with relatives who live nearby. Reporting for News Five, I am Jacqueline Woods.

Referring to complaints that the fire service was tardy in their response, Personnel Manager Norris Fisher told News Five that they responded as soon as the call was received from police around one fifty this morning. Three minutes later, Fisher said two large trucks were on the scene and that shortly after another one thousand gallon truck was dispatched to the area.