Firemen run out of water as multi-million-dollar home burns

STRONG criticism was levelled at the Penal fire services, which arrived late and ran out of water as a multi-million-dollar home was gutted on Tuesday morning.

Four members of a family were left homeless.

Homeowner Soogrim Soondar wept as he watched the home he spent his lifetime to build at Seebalack Trace, Rochard Road, Penal, go up in flames.

Singer Raymond Ramnarine, a relative of the Soondars who visited the family to offer support, told the Newsday, “It broke my heart to see this old man cry.

"To have lost everything at this age, it’s not easy.”

Soondar said, “It’s not a nice thing to cope with, to see your house on fire. If my son did not wake me up, I would have been trapped. I would have died, because I am not well.”

Soondar lived with his son Allan, Allan’s wife and a granddaughter.

Standing in front of the ruins, Allan told the media something could have been salvaged if the response had been swifter.

“Their response was poor. They (fire officers) had no ladders, no torch or headlights. They had nothing.

"In less than ten minutes they had no water. They had to wait for another fire truck, which came long after.”

In the interim, he said, while waiting for the arrival of the second fire truck, “They had to drive around looking for a fire hydrant to get water.

“The fire officers were willing to work, but they have no resources”

Pointing to other incidents where a lack of resources has resulted in death and destruction, Allan said Government has to get serious about properly resourcing the fire services, “or this would continue and more people would suffer.

“We have a so-called state-of-the-art fire station in Penal, yet they still do not have a tender to respond to the fire.”

His neighbour Feroze Abdool said the response was unacceptable and disgusting.

Abdool said neighbours had to lend the fire officers ladders and headlights, as well as an agricultural pump to pump water from a domestic water tank when their tender ran out.

He said his son Ryan suffered minor burns to his hands as he tried to douse the blaze and stop it from spreading to their home.

Abdool said he and his family awoke to the sounds of something like an explosion, crying and screaming,and saw his neighbour’s house on fire.

He said several neighbours tried to call both the fire services and police.

“We had difficulty in contacting the police or fire stations. We were directed to make calls to other places – some of us had to make calls to three or four different places in order to get the fire to respond.

“The first fire truck arrived about 35-40 minutes after the calls were made. They started dousing the flames, only to run out of water.

“The second truck came about half of an hour later, but it was, essentially, too late. The entire house was gutted.”

Calling the elder Soondar his brother, "because we grew up together," Abdool said he is now in his early 70s.

“I would imagine this is the point when the man should relax and enjoy his life. He lost his wife a year ago, and to come and lose your home can’t be acceptable. Replacing that is impossible for him at this age.”

Allan said around 2.45 am on Tuesday, he and his family were awoken by a crackling sound, like glass being broken. Opening the bedroom door, he realised the house was engulfed in smoke. He gathered his father, wife and daughter and they escaped from the burning building.

The house was insured, but the family lost items that are irreplaceable.

Allan said the cause of the blaze is still to be determined by fire officers, who returned to the scene on Tuesday afternoon.