A fire tore through Regent Household Electronics on Wednesday afternoon, destroying the three-storey retail premises and forcing the closure of a stretch of one of Georgetown's busiest commercial streets. The business owner confirmed that every member of staff had been evacuated and accounted for before the flames took hold in earnest.

The fire began shortly after one o'clock. Smoke rose in thick columns that could be seen from across central Georgetown within minutes, drawing crowds to the edges of the police cordon. As the blaze intensified, the building's western facade buckled and gave way, collapsing into the street below. Deputy Fire Chief Wayne Scotland said crews had managed to keep the fire confined to the single structure, a result he attributed to the speed of the response given how tightly packed the surrounding buildings are.

Firefighters worked the scene from several directions at once, directing water onto the building itself and onto neighbouring properties to prevent the fire from spreading. Smoke had by then settled heavily over the block, and several nearby buildings were evacuated as a precaution while crews worked to bring the fire under control. Regent Street was closed between Light and Albert streets for much of the afternoon and into the evening, and traffic was diverted onto side roads that were not built to carry the volume.

For Shaheed Hamid, who owns the property, the fire revives a painful history. The same site was previously home to the Grand Coastal Guest House, which he also lost to fire in 2009. Speaking near the cordon as crews continued to dampen down the wreckage, he said little beyond confirming that his staff were safe. The scale of what has been lost, financially and otherwise, is not yet clear, and it may be some time before an estimate can be made with any confidence.

Investigators have not yet determined what caused the fire. A structural assessment of the remaining building will need to take place before anyone can enter what is left of the premises, and officials have not said when that might happen. Wednesday's fire is the latest in a series of blazes to hit commercial buildings in Georgetown's centre, an area where many structures date back decades and were not built with modern fire suppression systems in mind.

Local businesses near the site said trade had been disrupted for the rest of the day, with several forced to close early once the smoke made conditions inside unworkable. One shop owner two doors down said she had smelled smoke before she saw it, and had only a few minutes to move stock away from the front of her store. Customers were turned away throughout the afternoon as the cordon expanded to cover a wider section of the street than initially planned.

By early evening, the fire had been brought under control, though crews remained on site monitoring hot spots within the collapsed section of the building. Scotland said it was too early to say whether any further sections of the structure were at risk of collapse, and that the site would remain closed to the public until engineers had completed a full inspection.

The Guyana Fire Service has not released a timeline for its investigation into the cause of the blaze. Residents in the area have been asked to avoid the affected block of Regent Street until further notice, and further updates on the reopening of the road are expected in the coming days.

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