There was a house fire in Belize City this morning in the St Martin's area.
As the smoke rose up into the air, surveillance footage from a neighbors home captured the moment the house was gutted in a matter of minutes. Jomarie Lanza visited the scene of the aftermath this morning and here's what she learned:
This is the house that a family in the Martins area on Williams Street, left this morning - that is, up until 9:45 when a fire broke out and gutted the entire small wooden and zinc structure.
Fortunately, the grandmother had already taken the children from the home at around 9:00 am before the fire started.
Neighbor
"Nobody wasn't there. Usually kids are in the house after the parents go out and stuff like that but the lady she got a job today so she found babysitter and she took the kids to a babysitter so no one was in the house."
Jo-
"When you first saw the smoke and the flames you know what was the first thing that ran through your mind."
Neighbor
"Well the kids, usually the kids are in the house so that run on my mind so I ran out the house to check on the kids but no one was there today and god is good that everybody is okay and was out of the house."
And though no one was hurt, a family lost all its belongings.
One neighbor claims that the fire department's untimely response prevented them from being able to save the structure.
Neighbor
"Well this morning I was in my house and we saw a little smoke me and the neighbors and we were calling the fire truck and about two hours before the fire truck reach by the time they came, the police reach before the fire truck this morning expectedly, and we call them they came and by the time the fire truck reach the house had already finished burning down. So I am giving the fire people them this warning you need to do a better job because if you are on time I think you could save a lot of houses but you can't do this. Two hours before you guys reach it doesn't make any sense man really it really makes no sense I really need you to do better than thins the officers them they really showed us a really good work this morning they were on time but the fire truck need to do better."
We did try to get a comment from the Fire Department. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.
