Fire in Guyana School Dormitory Kills at Least 20 Children

A hor­rif­ic fire swept through a dor­mi­to­ry at a school in the South Amer­i­can coun­try of Guyana, claim­ing the lives of at least 20 chil­dren and injur­ing sev­er­al oth­ers. Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Irfaan Ali declared a state of emer­gency after the “dev­as­tat­ing disaster.”

The blaze broke out on Sun­day night at the Mah­dia Sec­ondary School dor­mi­to­ry in cen­tral Guyana. Ali said the gov­ern­ment lost “many inno­cent souls” in the fire and urged cit­i­zens to pray for the chil­dren, their fam­i­lies and communities.

Ali instruct­ed Guyana’s two main hos­pi­tals in the cap­i­tal city of George­town to be on high alert and pro­vide the “best pos­si­ble care” for any child need­ing med­ical atten­tion. Heavy rain and bad weath­er con­di­tions hin­dered emer­gency work­ers in reach­ing and putting out the destruc­tive fire that con­sumed the remote dor­mi­to­ry, locat­ed 124 miles south of Georgetown.

Pri­vate planes and mil­i­tary air­craft flew doc­tors and sup­plies to the dis­as­ter site to evac­u­ate vic­tims and pro­vide emer­gency aid. At least one plane already trans­port­ed three evac­uees to George­town, accord­ing to reports. The gov­ern­ment coor­di­nat­ed a large-scale med­ical response and emer­gency action plan to receive and treat crit­i­cal patients.

Oppo­si­tion lead­ers are demand­ing a full inves­ti­ga­tion into the cause of the cat­a­stroph­ic fire that took so many young lives. Natasha Singh-Lewis, an oppo­si­tion MP, said offi­cials must find out how “this most hor­rif­ic and dead­ly inci­dent” hap­pened to pre­vent future tragedies of this scale.

The impov­er­ished South Amer­i­can nation of 800,000 peo­ple recent­ly dis­cov­ered huge off­shore oil reserves, hop­ing new petro­le­um wealth will dri­ve rapid eco­nom­ic and social devel­op­ment. Guyana has the sec­ond high­est per­cent­age of rain­for­est cov­er on the planet.

The dev­as­tat­ing fire that destroyed a school dor­mi­to­ry and took so many chil­dren’s lives has plunged the coun­try into mourn­ing. The pres­i­dent said the painful loss of life weighs heav­i­ly on all Guyanese dur­ing this time of nation­al tragedy.

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