Bridgetown.
A fire broke out in a building in Tudor Street last night.
Shelly Caesar who rents one of the stores in the buliding told Trakker News: "I just rented the store, it was empty for a while and I was planning to opening on November 1.
According to Caesar, the Light and Power had turned on the electricity yesterday evening her brother, boyfriend, and about four other people were helping move in the stuff from the old store to the new one when she was alerted to the fire by her brother..
“It was upstairs. We didn’t know. We were just packing out merchandise. He came back downstairs shouting ‘fire’, Caesar said.
Her brother Kelvin Rowe said he heard a loud sound like running water, and thinking a pipe had burst, went to check.
“I heard the sound getting louder. I didn’t see the water running down the steps and then I saw the light and smelled the smoke", Rowe said.
He alerted the three others who were on the bottom floor and they ran out unharmed, grabbing the majority of the merchandise.
Acting deputy chief fire officer Lloyd Phillips said four fire tenders and 12 fire men under his command responded to the fire by 11:07 p.m. Several store owners who had businesses in the area came out to assess the damage.
A number of them called for building inspections, and lamented the one-door exit and entrance on many of the properties for which they paid rents almost amounting to $15 000 a month in some cases.
