Belizean nightclubs: disasters in waiting
We try not to copy the mass feeding frenzy of the U.S. media, but sometimes events up north can’t help but get us thinking. That’s what I did following recent tragedies in Chicago and Rhode Island…and after speaking to the Fire Chief this afternoon my worst fears for Belize have been confirmed.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
For the past five days, these images have dominated the international media. The nightclub fire that left nearly a hundred people dead might have made you wonder: how safe is a night out on the town in Belize?
Henry Baizar, Fire Chief
“It can happen and if happens there will be a stampede because people will try to get out as what happened in the clubs abroad; everybody was heading for the exits.”
According to Fire Chief Henry Baizar, Belize has been very lucky. Crammed clubs and inadequate exits could easily set the stage for disaster.
Henry Baizar
“The two main ingredients that will cause the loss of life in these nightclubs. One is exits, there must be enough exits in clubs and it must be accessible so that people can come out if there is a problem. Whenever we go and check these exits are blocked by storage or has on a lock or something, so they are not considered an exit as far as we are concerned. We are not that happy with the type of safety that is practiced by a lot of these nightclubs and whatnot.”
“The second thing is that the clubs must not be overcrowded, they must not be overloaded. There should be a limit and everybody should have a certain amount of space within a club and that is the way how you come up with how much people should be in the club.”
Currently, concerned club owners can contact the department for tips on how to protect their patrons and establishments from fire. However, the absence of laws to force the hotspots to comply with codes is an added challenge for the authorities.
Henry Baizar
“We do our checks from time to time, but the thing here is that the people who do give the license for most of these clubs are the liquor license board to which the Fire Department is not a member. What has happened here, however, is that there is a lot of local authorities who ask us for assistance and we welcome the idea and we go and do what we need to do for fire safety… We write a report we forward it to the owners and these are the recommendations we need to do xyz and we do go back three months, six months to ensure these things are practiced. Some of them do try to rectify some of the problems, some of them are very reluctant.”
Baizar is confident that within six months to a year, the Fire Department will be armed with the legal wherewithal to make clubbing in Belize safer.
Henry Baizar
“We just finished our Fire Service Act, a new one that we have rewritten. And embedded in that new act is occupancy load, inspections, and even before an entertainment place is given a license to operate or to sell liquor or to have entertainment, there needs to be a fire certificate.”
“Once we go there and they are not living up to the regulations, those will be closed down. We will have the authority to just say, well you are in violation of this and we are taking out everybody, we are closing the place and we are locking it up.”
Janelle Chanona
“So if you are in a club and you see an exit marked, but it’s blocked and you see that you barely have elbow room, the safest thing to do would be to leave?”
Henry Baizar
“Is to leave; is to get out. Because if something happened, exactly what happened in the States will happen here in Belize.”
The public is also asked to take a close look at bars and dance halls with thatched roofs, as in the event of fire, they produce a deadly rain of flames.
