Fire kills three in Grand Bassa

A horrible fire incident is reported to have killed three persons and burned down an 11 bed-room – house in Grand Bassa County on Wednesday morning, 25 October.

A state broadcaster LBS correspondent in the county told the station’s regular phone – in program with correspondents on Wednesday that he received a call surrounding the incident around 12:30am on Wednesday.

The LBS correspondent says he was informed that a house on New Youth Street was on fire with three children trapped in the flaming building. In addition to killing the three children, the correspondent says the fire also damaged several properties.

Quoting residents around the scene of the incident, the correspondent says the fire reportedly started from the room where a lady and her children were in bed.

The lady in question is said to have lit a mosquito coil in the room which allegedly fell on the floor while they were asleep. The burning coil is reported to have gradually burnt the flood mat in the room, before other materials in the room got ablaze while the lady and her kids were still asleep.

According to the correspondent, when the lady woke up from bed, the fire had moved onto other parts of the house, and others had come out to put some of their belongings outside.

Due to the smoke, the correspondent says the inhabitants of the house could not successfully get anything from the house. According to the correspondent, what he gathered is that the lady whose children were left in the fire had earlier lost her husband last year.

The lady is said to have attempted killing herself with a knife following the fire incident, but neighbors came around and stopped her. According to the LBS correspondent, Liberia National Fire Services cars in the area are down, thus impeding the institution’s intervention. He says residents came out with buckets of water and tried to extinguish the fire, but never succeeded.

By Bridgett Milton–Edited by Winston W. Parley