Free Zone gets fire fighting training for gas stations

In 1998, one point seven million gallons of petrol moved through the Corozal Free Zone into the Mexican market. This constant traffic of highly combustible material has triggered the management of the free zone to train nine of its new employees in fire fighting skills to prevent any major explosion from taking place. The course, which ran for five weeks, concluded today at the National Fire Service in Belize City.

The men will be in charge of monitoring the gas stations within the free zone to make sure that they are operating under international safety standards. The graduates will be present for every unloading and loading of fuel.

Damain Espat

“The methods of how you would rescue someone, the extinguishing. Because when there is a fire there is very intensive heat that needs very courageous people to do this kind of thing.”

Karl Leacock

“On the course we learnt about RTA which is road traffic accidents. We learnt how to fight fuel fires, safety measures concerning fuel stations and the dispensing of petrol at fuel stations, also the checking of tanker.”

Michael Williams

“The course is of utmost importance to everybody working at the zone. What happens is that the people who are very ignorant of this fire fighting and all of this stuff that is thought to be hazardous in the free zone, they are not aware of these things, but having done this five week course the members of this course have become very aware of what could happen and what could be the consequences.”

Henry Baizer, Fire Chief, National Fire Service

“We taught them basic fire fighting, combustion, what is fire. We taught them inspection of service station, inspection of the fuel tankers when they go in to deliver fuel and these sort of things.

A few of them started off very slow but gradually they got motivated and encouraged and everything. And at the end they did pretty good.”

According to Francis Gegg, the Chief Executive Officer of the Free Zone Management Agency, there have been close calls in the past and it was as a result of those incidents that the course was held.

Francis Gegg, CEO, Free Zone Management Agency

“We have had several cars catch fire on the roads leaving with fuel. We have had some very close calls where a tanker truck was unloading and he hadn’t grounded his tanker properly and there was static electricity and one of the vents of the tanks caught on fire. Fortunately that truck driver was trained to the point of that he knew what to do. Had he used his fire extinguisher in a wrong manner, he would have blown that fire back into that tank and we could have had a huge explosion which could have been very catastrophic.”

The course cost the Free Zone seven thousand dollars but Gegg says it was money well spent to help keep the zone a safer place to do business.