Fire service gets truck from Canada
Belizean firefighters may soon find themselves part of a Canadian exchange program. But while Fire Chief Henry Baizar and a Canadian counterpart, Bob Beckett were exploring the possibilities over the past few days, an important piece of equipment arrived. News Five was at the Port Authority this morning for the handing over of a Canadian fire truck.
The fifteen thousand dollar donation is a gift from Rotary Club International. The twenty-year-old truck was in use at a fire service in British Colombia, Canada but was refurbished before it was shipped to Belize.
Ernesto Vasquez, Int’l Director, Rotary Club of Belize
“It’s a contact between myself as the International Director and their International Director and they came back one day and said we have a fire truck here and we are either going to send it back to the factory. Can you use it and we said sure.”
Henry Baizar, Fire Chief, National Fire Service
“It is very valuable in the sense that what we have presently is not enough to cope with some of the situations in Belize City. Most of the trucks we have are pretty old, much older than this one and they are incapable of lifting water from open sources like the river, the canal and the sea. Now this truck will be able to do that.”
The truck is capable of pumping twelve hundred and fifty gallons of water per minute. According to Bob Beckett, Fire Chief at the Langford, British Colombia Fire Department the donation is just one part of the project, there will also be an exchange program.
Bob Beckett, Fire Chief, Langford Fire Service
“The truck has been donated but that is only one part of the program. The part that I am really excited about is the opportunity for us to learn from each other and develop a training network program that will see our firefighters coming to Belize to assist and the Belize firefighters coming to our Province, the Province of British Colombia to assist us and to learn as well from our fire service academy.”
The Belize City Fire Service now has five trucks and they have ordered five more new trucks. These are expected by the end of April.
