Two more fire trucks for south and west
When the Paslow Building burned on September twenty-eighth, the media spotlight was firmly focussed on the fire department’s amazing new hook and ladder truck…and rightly so. But while fire fighters in Belize City boast state of the art equipment, the same could not be said for the rest of the country. Today two vehicles came out of customs that will set things right in two district capitals.
Marion Ali, Reporting
Residents of Punta Gorda and Santa Elena will be relieved to hear that shortly their towns will each receive a recently acquired fire tender. The new brand second hand trucks, which arrived in Belize this week, were purchased in Miami at what Fire Chief Henry Baizar terms, the bargain price of one hundred and forty-seven thousand U.S. dollars. He says the two communities were selected based on the urgency of their needs.
Henry Baizar, Fire Chief
“The closest fire station to Punta Gorda is Dangriga, which is a hundred and odd miles away. If they should need assistance, by the time we get there, there would be nothing left. So we need to have something reasonably okay in this town, and we think its time for them to be on par with everyone else. San Ignacio, Santa Elena are two communities where we have very limited resources, and in terms of population, they are about the second or third largest, so we need to have something there likewise.”
Marion Ali
“For these communities still on the waiting list, what can you tell them in terms of how long more they have to wait?”
Henry Baizar
“We have made plans to get some more fire vehicles in the next financial year, depends on how the budget goes, and hopefully something will happen there. Virtually every year for the past three, four years, we’ve been getting a few vehicles as we go along and hopefully next financial year will be the same.”
Fire Chief Baizar says one of the tenders underwent remodelling as recently as 1999 at a cost of over a hundred thousand U.S. dollars. As for how well they can perform, Assistant Fire Chief, Ted Smith, says the trucks are every bit as good as later models.
Ted Smith, Assistant Fire Chief
“It carries seven hundred and fifty gallons of water that you can initially attack a fire with while you’re setting down your system to draw water from a nearby source.”
“It comes with provisions to mount a deck gun on the top of the vehicle, so we can always get a deck gun later on and mount it.”
“Mounted on the side here is a porter tank for working in areas that are remote, where access to water is not plentiful. So we set up this tank and bowsers on other trucks that may not have been fire trucks can bring up water and dump the water in the tank and the fire truck can take the water from the tank and discharge it to the fire.”
“Both pumps can adequately serve a community. Both pumps can do the same kind of job. The difference is one pump can throw two hundred and fifty gallons of water per minute more than the other pump. This one will do a thousand gallons maximum and this one will do twelve hundred and fifty gallons maximum.”
The two trucks will be handed over next week after receiving a few minor modifications.
Reporting for News 5, Marion Ali.
The trucks will be used in Santa Elena under the supervision of leading fire fighter, Carlos Vera, and in Punta Gorda under sub-station officer, Ronald Frazer.
