(Kaieteur News) – A two-year-old boy’s persistent knocking on a bathroom door may have saved his mother’s life — moments before a Thursday morning fire reduced their family’s two-storey home at Waterloo Street, Bath Settlement, Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice) to ash, leaving five people without shelter.

The blaze broke out just after 10:00am and consumed the wooden and concrete structure — which had stood for more than 20 years — within minutes.

Bibi Fareena Wahab, 20, was bathing when her toddler son began rapping on the door. “He called two times — ‘mammy, mammy’ — but he can’t talk properly,” she recalled. “I barely wrapped up with a towel. When I came out, all I could see was smoke. I grabbed him and I ran out. I couldn’t do anything.”