BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Jan. 20, 2022– An early morning fire destroyed the home of a Roaring Creek family of five on Wednesday, January 19. According to local media reports, the fire started sometime around 7:00 a.m.

Tanisha Cassasola, who lived in the home with her husband and three children, recounted the moment she discovered there was a fire in the house to local reporters: “I heard like a crackling noise, so I told my husband ‘go back in to check on my son; maybe he’s jumping around’. When he went out, he didn’t come back for a while, and then after that, I saw my 13-year-old daughter and my 5-year-old son came into the room. When they open the door, I saw like an influx of dark black smoke coming in, and it was consuming,” she said.

At that point, Cassasola, who does remote office work in one room of the house and was in that room when she was alerted of the fire, said, “When it comes to my kids, we lose everything. I work from home; laptop, system, desktop destroyed. My phones, new fridge, new stove, everything I just got for Christmas, everything [has gone]. Only the clothes on our backs that we walked out of the house with was what we were left with.” The value of the items in the house that were destroyed by the fire is estimated to be about $30,000.

Cassasola mentioned that a couple of her neighbors had told her that they saw the electricity lines near her house burst into flames, which were entering her home through the roof. However, the National Fire Service is still investigating the blaze and has not arrived at a definitive conclusion about what caused it.

Cassasola has commended local firefighters for their quick arrival and believes that if they hadn’t arrived promptly, the situation could have been more dire.

Anyone wishing to assist Tanisha Cassasola can make a deposit in her Belize Bank account, account number 235 3300 101 60000. Also, Cassasola can be reached at 600-3089.