Still No New Building: Fire Fighters Move to Temporary Quarters
The Belize National Fire Service headquarters has relocated to two temporary sites in Belize City. You’ll recall that the previous U.D.P. administration sold the fire station to Atlantic Bank before the General Elections. Today personnel were removing the final pieces of equipment as they closed off operations on Cleghorn Street. Fire Chief Colin Gillett tells us more.
Colin Gillett
Colin Gillett, Fire Chief
“We’ve separated operations from administration. So, the operations with the fire trucks and the ladies who answer the phone, those are at Marion Jones Stadium in the downstairs. That has ample space for all the trucks, the equipment; our mechanics are over there, too. We see that as a better place for us to stay for now because if you look at the issues we had here – just coming out of the yard there was always people waiting in line to go to the yard and blocking the traffic and the trucks that we have to take more than one swing to just come out. If you can imagine a Friday evening at three o’clock it is not good for operations. In Marion Jones they come out and can go in either direction. The administration building is actually now on Sunrise Avenue and that is temporary until we build the one on Chetumal Street which then we will make it a lot better than what we have now. If you look around with the building, it has been here for a while and it has been deteriorating over the years. There are a lot of cracks in the building; the electrical needs to be redone; the plumbing needs to be redone. It was either get a new building or spend massive amounts of money to fix this one. What we are doing with the new building which is supposed to be built on Chetumal Street, they will also have a fire truck there. The idea is to have more than one station to be able to coordinate and be able to attack a fire incident faster and have more coordinated approach to it.”
In September of 2020 the Barrow administration’s press office said that the proceeds of the sale of the building to Atlantic Bank for two point eight million dollars would allow it to “build a much better building at a cost of three point three million dollars that would include a water storage and tanking system on-site for less than half the price paid twenty-eight years ago.” At the time, the government said the new building would be built in the Lake Independence area. As viewers may recall, the Belize Fire Station Headquarters was originally built in 1992 under a contract for eight million dollars.
