Fire destroys home in King’s Park

While most residents of Belize City were making their way to work or school this morning, a drama was playing out in a quiet neighbourhood in King’s Park. News Five’s Janelle Chanona arrived on the scene as fire fighters were getting the blaze under control.

Janelle Chanona, Reporting
This morning Pastor Ruth Pipersburgh and her family tearfully watched smoke and water fill the place that for her entire life, she has called home.

Ted Smith, Assistant Fire Chief
“But no indication as to what may have caused the fire. We will now do an analysis of burn pattern and direction of spread and try to determine the area of origin and then we will see what kind of ignition source may exist at that area of origin.”

According to Pipersburgh, when she left her Landivar Street home around eight this morning, everything was in order.

Ruth Pipersburgh, Fire Victim
“This has memories, it hold a lot of memories, so it’s just frightening.”

Janelle Chanona
“Did you leave anything on?”

Ruth Pipersburgh
“I just ironed, that’s all I did and I take off the iron and I put up the ironing board so it can’t be that the iron was left on. No the house wasn’t insured.”

Janelle Chanona
“Do you think old wiring, have you changed anything?”

Ruth Pipersburgh
“Well standing here looking at it, it’s like it’s the roof that has burnt and the house is over thirty-five years old and so yes there is a possibility that…I don’t know, maybe it could be, I don’t know…I am yet to see if I can see something.”

Janelle Chanona
“What you heard first?”

Patrick Christie, Neighbour
“I heard somebody screaming outside and I came outside and when I saw the house on fire, I had to run inside back and get a knife and when I came back out I loose the dog. The dog ran off and I went and tried to loose the gas tank but it was scary so I couldn’t go up there and then the fire pump came kind of late. They start doing the simulation thing, the usual thing, try to have one house…”

Janelle Chanona
“Contain it before they out it?”

Patrick Christie
“Contain it and they start to argue, the fireman start to argue with the police and it was like uncalled for.”

Ted Smith
“We just had a little difficulty that we need to work out, just that we arrived here before police was in force so that makes it difficult dealing with crowd control but I won’t say we had any confusion. Any time you have multi-agencies dealing with a situation there will be things that we need to iron out. Just unfortunately you guys were within the impact area listening to conversation that you shouldn’t have been listening to.”

Janelle Chanona
“An eyewitness told me that your officers started to quarrel with police.”

Ted Smith
“No it’s not quarrel it’s dialogue, communication.”

As for putting out the blaze, Assistant Fire Chief Ted Smith says the officers at the scene were simply following department protocol.

Ted Smith
“So the first thing is to stop the fire from propagate or from moving into another area of the structure that is not yet under fire and then you go after the seat of the fire and extinguish it. If you go directly to the seat of fire, a fire that is well developed all you usually end up doing before extinguishing it is spread the fire around in the structure when you push the fire it push to other areas that is not yet on fire and you can set those areas on fire before you have brought it under control. That is not the way we do things, we are highly trained, well trained and we go after the area of fire spread first.”

As firefighters tried to put out the fire, they realized Pipersburgh’s butane tank was releasing gas. The tank was wrapped in wet cloth and quickly removed from the house. Smith cautioned everyone about the dangers of the popular household cooking fuel.

Ted Smith
“We see people with cameras and cell phones coming in with no regard for their safety or safety of the emergency personnel at the scene so we want to appeal to the public please take time and not to rush into the area.”

“If you are leaving the home, it is always advisable to put measures in place to reduce the risk of fires such as cutting off your LPG cylinder, cutting off the gas line. If they will not be in use, it’ll always wise to just turn the tank off.”

Ruth Pipersburgh
“Well all I’m looking at is that I’m alive and yes I have lost everything but with God all things work together for good for those that love him so I’ll hold on that I am fine and my family know that I’m okay and that God is going to let everything work out. Maybe right now I might not understand but down the road someway.”

If you would like to assist Pastor Pipersburgh, you can reach her at 622-0123.

Reporting for News Five, I am Janelle Chanona.

Pastor Pipersburgh, who works with the Central Assembly of God, will be staying with friends until her home can be rebuilt.