Fire Destroys Dangriga Clinic After Mattress Blaze Spreads

A fire swept through a local clinic in Dangriga this morning, resulting in losses estimated at over one hundred thousand dollars. The fire began when a resident in a nearby home reportedly lit a mattress on fire. The flames quickly spread out of control, engulfing the house before jumping to the neighboring clinic. Efforts to contain the blaze were hindered when the responding firetruck ran out of water.  Speaking with Love News, the wife of the clinic’s owner Iandra Arana expressed her disappointment over the destruction.

Iandra Arana, Wife of Owner: “This morning I was awoken by the police officers at my residence which is on Claudio Serano Street in the New Site area. I was awoken by the police officers that informed me that the building is on fire, my husband’s clinic is on fire. When I got here the neighbor’s house was completely burned and I got to understand that the guy that was living in the house had lit a sponge, I’m not sure if it’s his mattress or what it is but a sponge got lit in that house and that engulfed in fire and just because it’s very close to each other just the edge, the roof part of my husband’s clinic started to burn. And by the time the police came, the fire truck came, they came with a very small truck that went empty as usual and had to get filled back the whole building was damaged at the end of that fire by the time they managed to get it out. The whole clinic building and the neighbor’s house is completely damaged too. The clinic is a three bedroom structure, zinc roof, the siding is zinc too and the rest of the building is completely wooden. So it is completely damaged. It’s a three bedroom I could say a three bed room building. It was fully equipped with ultrasound machines, all these machinery that is used because it is an OBGYN clinic and our loss is estimated over a hundred thousand dollars. My plea to the government is to try to see how we can address mental health because the guy that was living next door he is mental health case. If they would be addressed it would be great help for our safety because it could have been that someone was in this building too and it was well secured so it was hard for even the fire guys, the fire department to get into the building. If someone was in this building it would have been bad and we shouldn’t wait for these things to happen to want to address certain things.”