Firefighters take heat for City blaze
Belizean firefighters, armed in recent years with new equipment and improved training, have generally received high marks from the public for their quick response time and ability to prevent large scale disasters. But things do not always go according to plan and this afternoon, on Usher Street in the Pickstock Division, it appears that everything that could go wrong…did.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
The chaos on Usher Street erupted around one o?clock this afternoon. Sharlene Gonzales told News 5 that she was at her next door neighbour?s house when she saw smoke coming from her own home.
Sharlene Gonzalez, Fire Victim
?When I run upstairs, I saw this flame just burst out from the gas range and I went and out the tank. But when I went back inside the house to try to throw some water what happen the smoke start to get to me and I run out with the baby because my instinct was the baby.?
Patrick Jones
?How many of you were in the house??
Sharlene Gonzalez
?At the time it was three.?
Thirteen people in all occupied the house where the fire started, but most of the children had just left for school after lunch. Hortence Joseph says the smell of smoke alerted her to the disaster and that was when she mobilized the neighbourhood.
Hortense ?Dubsie? Joseph, Neighbour
?Me deh ina fuh me house the watch my TV, bout round one fifteen. When I look, I smell like hot plastic, like rubber the burn. So you know me as the nosey neighbour, I like look, so when I come out now, I the come out fuh see dah what the go on. Now when I look, I just see some smoke the come from through the house there; the board house. So I shout and tell my neighbours them fire, fire. They ask me dah weh. I tell them dah Sharlene house, see smoke deh the come out of Sharlene window.?
Sharlene Gonzales, who stood helpless as the house she called home for the last thirty five years and all its contents, went up in smoke, says her best guess is that the fire originated in the kitchen.
Sharlene Gonzalez, Fire Victim
?But from earlier on when I light the stove I smell it and I went and out it. And I went and I check the tank. I took a bottle and squirt it around the tank and I say well the tank is not leaking, but what happen the problem was the hose. It looks like the hose had a hole or something in it and it just exploded.?
Apart from the Gonzales family home, two other buildings were also gutted and several others suffered heat damage.
But even while firemen were busy trying to out the flames, the department was taking some major heat as a tragic series of errors only served to stoke the fury of area residents who say this much destruction did not have to happen.
Hortense ?Dubsie? Joseph
?When them come, me mi think dah wah fast thing them mi wah do. When them come with some hose, all bursts up hose the burst up. Water the come out deh, no heavy-duty water the come out fuh go ina the place deh. We ask one ah the fire man right deh so with the yellow hat on pan hi head, go upstairs because Ms Vasquez house the ketch. You think he gone upstairs? He say he no going up deh. What kind a job them di do and them dah fireman??
A question to which, Assistant Fire Chief Ted Smith response is that, yes, there were operational difficulties, but firemen did the best they could under the circumstances.
Ted Smith, Assistant Fire Chief
?Our response time was excellent I must say, but the deployment on the ground we had some difficulty with our deployment and slow us down a little. We had some water problem at the open head, when we moved there it was obstructed by a number of equipment.?
?Initially you notice we were only working from the tank. How could we hook up a tremendous amount of hoses working only from a tank my brother that only have a twelve hundred gallons of water, and the pump can pump twelve hundred and fifty a minute. We will discharge the water in no time and them all of us will sit around and watch each other or frustrate each other. No, we had to use tactic and skills on the ground to effectively utilize the water source we had until we had the supplementary supply came in.?
But a blocked fire head adjacent to the Northern Fishermen?s Cooperative building was only one of the problems that the fire department faced in fighting this afternoon?s blaze. Others included hoses that leaked and burst under pressure, and a breakdown in the chain of command.
Ted Smith
?I?m not happy with our performance today, but I don?t think we are to blame. Yes, we are members of the fire department, we are paid to out fires but overall we didn?t light the fire and we did the best we can under the circumstance. We had some setbacks.?
?Some of the hoses were burst. True some came off the truck burst, should not have been on the truck. That?s an internal discipline problem that I am sure, I can assure you we will deal with it. We will deal with that situation because it should not have occurred. Some burst under pressure. During the excitement, when the guy got the water knowing that we desperately need it over pressurized the system and as a result one of the hoses burst.?
While the firemen were sorting out their operational difficulties, neighbourhood youths, like Deon Martinez used buckets and any other containers they could get their hands on to throw water and in some cases sand on the burning buildings.
Deon Martinez, Neighbour
?Well we actually the fight this fire twenty, twenty-five minutes before the fire service get yah.?
Patrick Jones
?And then when they got here what happened??
Deon Martinez
?Well actually the fire done deh ?bout quarter way to half way under control already. We are not asking for any reward, but at the same time we are asking for accuracy. We asking for accuracy in terms of work. This look very inappropriate for the Government of Belize. Simply because we are here outing the fire and the policeman are out there telling us leave the scene. And we are here fighting the fire. If it wasn?t for us this fire would not have been under control as yet.?
Hortense ?Dubsie? Joseph
?We watch and sih the slowness weh them di go. They noh the struggle fuh out the fire at all, at all, at all. Because if they di struggle fuh out the fire mi wah done out long time, before each and every one ah them house deh, before them ketch. Because no water di come wid them. They only bring wah lee bit ah water ina them tank, we tell them fuh goh dah the river side, dah the canal down deh fuh shove the hose down there fuh bring the water. If them mi go dah the river side and shove the hose down deh ina the canal, at least lot a house mi wah save, more than dem deh weh gone down.?
Patrick Jones
?So you blame the fire department??
Hortense ?Dubsie? Joseph
?I blame them.?
But Smith says all the blame cannot be laid at the steps of the department. In fact the number two man at the fire department says that while residents may have had good intentions, they actually got in the way of fire fighters.
Ted Smith
?Some of the other hoses that you see on the ground were ran by an umber of people who think they were helping us. But they were not needed, we were not using them, they were just there and so they look dead to you. But if you look, you saw that once water was restored, fire fighting was in a full swing.?
At least two of the buildings, including the one where the fire started, were not insured.
