Predawn blaze leaves 5 families homeless

Before dawn today, sirens echoed across the old capital as fire fighters responded to reports of a blaze in progress in the Mesopotamia division. And as I found out hours later, while a dozen people are homeless tonight, the damage could have been much worse.

Jacqueline Godwin, Reporting
The only casualties of an early morning fire at the corner of West and Bishop Streets were chickens and dogs as the flames spread too quickly for the owners to rescue the animals. Preliminary investigations by the National Fire Service reveal that the blaze started from this two storey wooden house and then spread to two adjacent buildings.

Henry Baizar, Fire Chief
“The three buildings were already on fire; the three buildings that burn completely they were already on fire.”

Because the fire occurred in one of the city’s congested neighbourhoods, Fire Chief Henry Baizar says they had to work hard to contain the blaze.

Henry Baizar
“They threw water on the three buildings of course but the idea was not to allow any other building to burn. You went there and you may have seen that there is seven other buildings that got burnt on the facial outside of the building and that is exactly what the guys were trying to do; not to allow the fire to go any further.”

The fire is being investigated from all angles including the possibility of arson. Residents have reported that shortly before the incident, a suspicious man was seeing running away from the area.

Henry Baizar
“The building where the fire started there is no electricity so something must have started the fire. We are doing our investigation and we really don’t know what started it as yet.”

One of the resident realized something was wrong when he heard the sounds of glass breaking.

Henry Baizar
“He thought it was his vehicle and he looked and he saw his vehicle intact but he smelled smoke and he saw a glare so he came downstairs and he saw that the building was on fire and said he went and got a bucket of water but by the time he filled the bucket the whole house was on fire so he virtually couldn’t do anything so actually what he did he jumped in his vehicle and he moved his vehicle. Thereafter other people did the same and moved their vehicles. One of the guys said while he moved his vehicle and by the time he came back the three buildings were on fire.

Three buildings were completely destroyed and seven other homes sustained fire and water damage.

But as investigators work to determine the cause of the fire, the National Fire Service is once again being accused of a slow response to the incident. In his department’s defence, Baizar says people have not been calling the right number so reports must be relayed by the police which does cause a delay.

Henry Baizar
“The only call we get was from the police; the police called us and we responded. We were called at 2:15 and we were there within three minutes.”

“They need to call 90. 90 if you have a Smart phone the telephone call will come directly to us. If it’s any other phone it will go to the B.T.L. operator who will patch the call through to us. The operator won’t even take the call. They will just send the call directly to us. They probably be calling 911; I don’t know what happen at 911, I can’t account for that. We got the call from the police so whoever called, called 911; they did not call us.”

In responding to another criticism, Baizar explained why at one point there was no water to battles the flames.

Henry Baizar
“Yes we did run out of water. When the truck got there they started fighting the fire from the water within our thanks. We have to break off probably for forty seconds to a minute when we will lift from the oven source, that’s when we break off, and as we got water back, as we got a lift from the canal to send water back to the fire scene a truck came on Euphrates Avenue, ran over the hose and burst two length of our hoses. We had to go and put in two new lengths of hoses then we sent water back on the scene.”

The fire has affected five families and left twelve persons without a home.

We would like to reiterate that the emergency number to contact the National Fire Service is 90.