Family Pleads for Support After Explosion Destroys Home

A Belize City family is struggling to rebuild after a weekend blaze on Rio Bravo Crescent in the Faber’s Road Extension area left their elderly loved one badly injured and their home destroyed.

79‑year‑old Kenneth Flowers, who suffers from dementia, was attempting to make a cup of coffee when an unconnected gas tank sparked an explosion.

Speaking about the incident, Flowers recalled, “I light the stove and put on the hot water. Next thing I know, I hear a cracking in the tank… Before I could get out of there good, the flame just come up right out of the burner straight in my face, knocked me down.”

Flowers sustained serious burn injuries in the blast and was rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital for treatment. His daughter, Andrea Flowers Sanchez, said she had stepped out briefly to buy food when her cousin next door called to say she heard an explosion and saw smoke.

“I had to hurry get into a taxi and get back home, cause I came out for food for me and my dad. I have nobody else to watch him when I’m not there. So I just took the chance to hurry come and get the food and go back and it happened,” she said.

Sanchez explained that she had disconnected the gas tank from the stove, but her father likely forgot when he attempted to light it.

The family lost all their possessions in the blaze. While clothing donations have started arriving, Sanchez, who is the sole caregiver for her father and mother to a two-year-old son, says their most urgent needs are furniture, bedding, pampers, and financial support.

“We really need financial support…  So far we get donation fi like clothes, but we need bed or different things, cause I need to find somewhere to put my dad cause he just sleep on the sofa. And he di punish. We don’t really have space at my mom,” she said.