It was an emotional scene at Eccles, East Bank Demerara Wednesday evening as fire ravaged Comfort Sleep and Payless bonds at their Industrial Site location.
The inferno started around 18:35h. Scores of persons flocked the scene as firefighters earnestly tried to prevent the blaze from spreading to other nearby buildings.
In tears, Comfort Sleep Manager Deodat Narine told media operatives that he had just closed off operations at the factory, when he received a call from the security guard on duty that the bond was on fire.
The bond, which was used to store chemicals used to make foam and other raw materials, was situated in close proximity of the factory.
Narine told media operatives that the fire started at the neighbouring Payless bond. According to him, Comfort Sleep and Payless sub-let the Eccles compound. He posited that the fire has caused tremendous loss, noting that millions of dollars in materials were consumed in the blaze. However, he said that none of the 35 workers attached to Comfort Sleep will lose their jobs.
“Nobody will be out of a job; everybody will remain having a job at Comfort Sleep.” Narine expressed gratitude to the Guyana Fire Services for preventing the fire from spreading to the neighbouring factory.
Loud explosions
Meanwhile, the security guard who was on duty at the Comfort Sleep factory in the neighbouring compound, said he heard a loud explosion at 18:35h. “I heard a big explosion, when I watch, I see a big ball of fire come out from that building there (Payless Bond) and it drop on the ground,” the guard who wished to remain anonymous recalled.
Subsequently, he said, the back of the building was engulfed in fire, before spreading to the Comfort Sleep bond, in which it fed on the chemicals, fuelling the fury of the raging inferno. He told this newspaper that the fire comes one day after Payless cleared the now burnt bond of all of its belongings. According to him, the stocks where moved to a newly-constructed bond, a short distance away.
Payless
A supervisor attached to the Payless Store bond, who was on the scene approximately one hour after the fire started, told Guyana Times International that he was working just around the corner where the store’s new bond is now located when he caught sight of the blaze.
“We were working at the new bond at the time of the fire. When we discovered it had like smoke in the air, we watch, we see red and we come around, but the place was already on fire,” the supervisor said, adding: “It was at the back of the building… so when we come around to gain access to the building, we could not… it was already consumed with fire.”
Denial
He stated that items were still in the building that was on fire at the time.“We have stuff in the bond… its normal things that we would sell in the store. The value of losses I can’t say,” he said.
In an invited comment while his charges were battling the blaze, Deputy Fire Chief Winston McGregor said the Comfort Sleep bond was already destroyed, and firefighters were doing all they could to save what was left of the Payless building.
Former Tourism, Industry and Commerce Minister Manzoor Nadir, who lives two corners away from the incident, visited the scene of the fire to comfort owners of the two businesses. “
“Comfort Sleep is a business I know almost all my life because the owner and I grew up in James Street, Albouystown, so Denis Charan, the owner of Comfort Sleep, we go back a long way; it has been wtwo decades of hard work that he has put in to building this business,” Nadir said. He recalled that Charan had for many years expressed concerns about storing the chemicals used to make the foam away from the factory.
