BY EVERSON MUSHAVA/TINOTENDA SAMUKANGE
A MYSTERIOUS fire yesterday evening gutted a wing of Prophetic Healing and Deliverance Ministries founder Walter Magaya’s Waterfalls hotel destroying property worth thousands of dollars.
The upper floor of the wing was completely destroyed by the ravaging fire, which took the fire brigade more than an hour to extinguish. The ground floor was, however, not affected.
The fire broke out at around 5pm, according to some church members, with the fire brigade arriving at the scene about 40 minutes later. They managed to put out the fire at around 7pm.
Magaya’s spokesperson Admire Mango confirmed the incident.
“I received a call at around 5:30pm that there was a raging fire at the hotel. I contacted the security personnel on the ground, but they seemed not aware of what was happening. The fire started at the upper room of the western side,” Mango said.
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“In this room, there were a lot of things, including beds and mattresses. What is very strange is that there was no electricity, the generator was also off, but there was a fire from nowhere. While I am not pin-pointing anything, we smell a rat. It is very clear the circumstances are not normal given the fact that there was no electricity and no gas nearby.
“We don’t rule out foul play, but we are happy the police are there investigating. We don’t want to jump into conclusions … we are very suspicious of whatever is happening given the events of the past few days. The fortunate part is that it is just a section of the hotel that has been affected and not the rest of the hotel. No one was injured.”
When NewsDay arrived, terrified people were milling around the hotel yard as fire fighters were battling the raging inferno.
Magaya was recently in the eye of a storm after a couple claimed he raped and impregnated their teenage daughter.
The police said investigations into fire incident were underway.
“The police are still attending to the report. We will release our findings soon,” police national spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi said yesterday.