Man dies in fire

Police said that Jameel Alambi, 37, had no chance of escaping the inferno which gutted three wooden apartments, one on top each other, in the building. The floor of each apartment was made of wood and Alambi, who lived on the top floor, is believed to have fallen from his apartment home to the one below when fire ate away the flooring. His charred, unrecognisable remains were found near the wheelchair hours after firemen doused the flames. Police sources told Newsday that when the New Year began, shortly after midnight, the sky overlooking the apartment building lit up with firework set off by persons from the Mango Rose area with a firework response from those at nearby Nelson Street. As the ‘war’ continued, sparks from the fireworks from both Mango Rose and Nelson Street ignited the wooden rafters of the apartment complex.

It is believed that the burning roof led to the floor of the top apartment igniting.

Alambi’s mother Roslyn tried her best to get her wheelchair-bound son out of the burning apartment on the third floor. When she could not, she ran out of the apartment to seek help but by then it was too late and the third-floor apartment caved in, followed by a similar collapse of the second floor apartment.

Alambi’s body was found among ruins in the ground floor apartment. His remains were taken to the Forensic Science Centre for autopsy tomorrow.

For most of December, amid the Yuletide Season, debate raged across the country over the wholesale use of fireworks not only at Christmas time but also at Divali and Independence Day much to the detriment of the health and well-being of the elderly and people’s pets.

It has been well documented that criminals use the cover of the noise of fireworks to shoot and kill rivals.

There have been calls for the banning of scratch bombs, stringent regulation on the sale of fireworks and harsher penalties for persons breaking existing laws regarding the sale of unauthorised types of fireworks, especially those containing gun powder. Investigations into Alambi’s death are continuing.