Nineteen "young people" died on the evening of Sunday, May 21, in Guyana, in the possibly "malicious" fire of a girls' school dormitory in Mahdia, a mining town in this small country in the northeast of the South America.
“This is a major disaster. It's horrible, it's painful ", regretted, Monday morning, the president, Irfaan Ali. The latter, who declared three days of national mourning, went to the scene of the tragedy in the afternoon in the company of a large government delegation including the chief of police. "We will continue to be by your side," he told the families.
“Initial investigation suggests that the fire was started in a malicious manner,” Guyana Police Chief Clifton Hicken said during a televised briefing in Mahdia. He did not elaborate on possible reasons, but said "DNA tests" were being carried out and six bodies had been autopsied. “Fourteen young people died on the spot, while five died at the Mahdia district hospital,” according to a statement from the firefighters published in the morning.
The president confirmed these figures in the afternoon, specifying that a little boy and thirteen young girls had died on the spot and that five people had died in the hospital of Mahdia. According to the new report, seventeen are still hospitalized.
Difficult rescues and evacuations
The authorities, have reviewed the figures concerning those present: according to the new report, fifty-nine young girls were "registered" in the dormitory but three were absent to spend the weekend at home.
"Firefighters managed to save about 20 students by drilling holes in the northeast wall of the building," according to the sappers' statement. The windows of the concrete building were fitted with security bars.
Evacuations by air and medical reinforcements were made difficult by heavy rain, the emergency services said. The city of Mahdia is located about 200 km south of Georgetown, the capital, but the drive is on a dirt track and usually takes a day.
The fire broke out in the girls' dormitory, where young people aged "11-12 to 16-17 years old" live, said a person who accompanied the emergency services on site, on condition of anonymity. The building is completely charred with walls blackened by the flames. The tin roof collapsed.
At the end of the morning, around fifty people expressed their anger after the tragedy in Chenapau, a village near Mahdia, where some of the victims are from, told Agence France-Presse Michael McGarrell, a resident of Georgetown reached on the phone and lost two nieces.
"Thorough Investigation"
"We need to be compensated for our losses," read one sign. “Bars are for inmates. We need justice,” according to another poster. “The pain, the agony, the trauma… Who will be held responsible? What are we going to tell the parents? asked Michael McGarrell, an activist with the NGO Amerindian People's Association (APA), often at odds with the government over land rights, gold panning and, more recently, the sale of carbon credits to the American oil company Hess.
“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those affected by this tragedy,” said Natasha Singh-Lewis, Opposition MP.
“We call on the authorities to carry out a thorough investigation into the causes of the fire and to provide a detailed report on what really happened. We must understand how this horrific event happened and take all necessary measures to prevent such a tragedy from happening again in the future,” she added.
A small poor English-speaking country of 800,000 inhabitants, Guyana, a former Dutch and then British colony, has the largest per capita oil reserves in the world. He hopes for rapid development in the years to come with the exploitation of these reserves which is still in its infancy. Specialists estimate that the Guyana-Suriname Basin contains around 15 billion barrels of oil reserves associated with significant gas deposits.
