Regent Street fire leaves another person homeless

Two consecutive pre-dawn fires, in two alleys? That’s enough to raise suspicion that a pyromaniac is on the loose. Well, Monday morning’s fire in Petticoat Alley was followed by another inferno in an unnamed alley off Regent Street and it had striking similarities to Monday morning’s blaze. It broke before four o’clock and destroyed a two-storey building occupied by a caretaker. Edward Robinson was in the building and managed to get out unharmed. News Five’s Delahnie Bain found out that another tenant had recently been evicted from the building and has this report.

Delahnie Bain, Reporting

Before the sun rose today, fire fighters in Belize City were called to put out a blaze on Regent Street—the second early morning fire in two consecutive days. The house, immediately behind Young’s law firm, was completely gutted in the inferno but the law firm was merely scorched. Training Officer for the National Fire Service, Kenneth Mortis, says the sole occupant, Edward Robinson, managed to escape but lost everything.
Kenneth Mortis, Training Officer, National Fire Service

kenneth morris

“This is the remains of what used to be 30A Regent Street. This fire took place a couple minutes before four this morning and on arrival our team observed that this building was fully engulfed in flames. After we extinguished the fire we did an investigation which led us to believe that the building at the time was being occupied by one Mr. Robinson. One of the rooms were occupied by Mr. Flowers who had been evicted from the premises. The owner of the building, Ms. Elaine Miller, we learnt she had passed away some time.”

Mortis says they were able to contain the blaze the quickly, once they worked around their biggest obstacle… the location.

Kenneth Mortis

“Coming through the alley, our biggest challenge would have been getting here because as you can see, the alley, you can almost fly past it if you don’t know where it’s at. But once we got here it was just a matter of getting down the line of work and putting our guys into operation. To bring this fire under control it took us approximately twenty minutes and from there we just continued with total extinguishment of the fire.”

Another similarity to Monday’s fire is that today’s blaze is believed to have been intentionally set. If you look at the facts—an early morning blaze destroys a house in an alley and is a suspected arson—you’d think it’s a repeat of yesterday’s story. So is there connection between the two?

Kenneth Mortis

“We believe the fire to have started by a malicious act, namely arson. We choose this based on our findings. At the scene we found the remains of some accelerant, namely kerosene that was left here. The container was placed on the base of the septic tank and from there the fire started and spread upward thus consuming the remainder of the building. I am hoping it’s merely coincidence. It’s two different fires, two different locations and two different sets of families so I’m hoping we don’t have a pyromaniac out there but if that is the case we’ll just have to keep doing what we do best and that is outing fires and keep working closely with the police.”

The house was insured for thirty-five thousand dollars, but the fire department has not yet determined the total value of the loss. Delahnie Bain for News Five.

No one has been detained so far for the suspected arson. And in respect to the fire at Petticoat Alley, police expect to charge the ex-boyfriend of Doreth Forman on Wednesday.