A fire ripped through a store in downtown Belize City on the tenth of September. It occurred at around one in the morning, inside Classic Center which is on Queen Street between the Police Station and the PUP’s Independence Hall headquarters. Flaring up between such important structures, it could have been disastrous but it wasn’t. We visited the scene this morning and saw the damage.
Keith Swift Reporting,
These are what’s left of the flat screen TVs, stereos, and footwear that were inside the Classic Center. The thousands of dollars in electronics were consumed in minutes by the fire which started at around 1 am on the tenth. The store’s owner Suress Raisingani closed up shop at 9 pm the night before.
Suress Raisingani, Store Owner
“I get a call from the lady like at about 1:30 in the night, she said your place has a fire and I came and I saw the fire. It was on fire.”
Keith Swift,
When did you leave the building?
Suress Raisingani,
“When we usually
close.”
Keith Swift,
What is the damage?
Suress Raisingani,
“A lot because it is electrical things, I have electrical items and some clothing and footwear.”
Keith Swift,
Can you think of a possible cause?
Suress Raisingani,
“I don’t know.”
Classic Center shared the building with three other stores. One of them is Sunset Music. Today they were repainting walls, cleaning shelves, and feeling lucky.
Teddy Grant, Sunset Music
“We get a lot of smoke. We didn’t get no water damage or nothing. We are already fixing back and hopefully by tomorrow morning we will be back in business.”
Keith Swift,
So what did you lose?
Teddy Grant,
“We didn’t lose nothing, we didn’t lose nothing because we didn’t have no water damage, fire or nothing, just basically smoke. Right now what we are doing is taking down the stock off the wall and wiping the wall and painting it up because we have to make it look good for the customers to come in tomorrow. The store will be opened tomorrow definitely.”
But moving on won’t be that easy for Suress Raisingani.
Keith Swift,
How do you recover from this?
Suress Raisingani,
“Well we try and see what we can do. We have small insurance but after that we will see.”
As Raisingani indicated, the contents were not fully insured. The two other stores the building, Catwalk Boutique and BECO Wholesale both received water damage. The Fire Department is investigating to determine a possible cause.
