The National Emergency Management Organization is in full gear with less than two months away from the Tropical Atlantic Hurricane Season. Today, public officers received training at a shelter management and tsunami preparedness workshop. According to NEMO, these types of trainings take place all year round, but this year, there is a special component that […]
There were two house fires in Belize City in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Around two-thirty that morning on Flamboyant Street, a fire broke inside the home of a forty-three-year-maintenance worker and his seventeen-year-old son. The electrical fire consumed the entire house and nothing was saved. News Five’s Andrea Polanco tells us more. […]
Aside from the two house fires in the city, there was another blaze, but this time in Punta Gorda. A small family home was completely destroyed around four on Monday morning. There was no one at home at the time and fire officials say they are yet to determine a cause. Orin Smith of the […]
….and from house fires to a vehicle fire. Sometime after twelve-thirty on Wednesday morning, fire-fighters were called out to the parking lot of an apartment complex on University Drive, Belize City, where they saw an SUV engulfed in flames. The fire-men proceeded to put out the fire but by that time the vehicle was covered […]
Back to the city where even as police were processing the crime scene at Pregnant Alley, a fire broke just off Hyde’s Lane in the city. It started at a wooden house and quickly spread to another building before the Fire Department could contain the blaze. While Yolanda Ramos and Michael Rosado were not at […]
The corn and beans crop planted late last year by villagers in the Toledo District, particularly San Benito Poite, was wiped out this past weekend by flooding. Villagers are staring disaster in the face after an unusually rainy few weeks in the area. The floods also caused the area to become inaccessible by road, reducing […]
Villagers of San Benito Poite in the Toledo District are staring disaster in the face after floods hit the community over the weekend. It has been an unusually rainy few weeks in the area and in addition to being inaccessible by road; their primary crops – corn for subsistence farming and beans for commercial sale […]
Speaking of the long-term effects, Salas posited that the change in weather patterns is attributable to climate change. He called for a strategy by authorities to help farmers plant more effectively to survive these occasional catastrophes. On the Phone: Osmany Salas, Senator for Non-Governmental Organizations “In the medium to long-term, since they are recognizing […]
The Fire Department’s quick action on Sunday night averted a major disaster on Sixth Street in Belize City. An electrical fire broke on an ice cream truck just as its driver was concluding the day’s work and parking the van. Fortunately, the driver was not injured, but the blaze threatened another van and house nearby. […]
Meanwhile a family of four from the Bainesville community, just outside of Hattieville, is tonight without a roof over their heads following an early morning fire last Thursday that swept through their wooden house. Twenty-seven-year-old Erica Belisle, her twenty-two-year-old common-law husband Scott Usher Senior and their two children, ages four and one, were not at […]
But as it turns out, Belisle says that the alleged culprit is well-known to the family. While she is not sure what could have triggered the torching of her home, she believes he was paid to burn the house down. But when her common-law-husband confronted his uncle about the fire, Usher Senior was instead detained […]
Overnight, heavy rains came down on Belize City and other parts of the country. The downpour immediately caused flooding across the city and water levels are rising in the Belize River Valley as well as the Macal and Mopan Rivers in the west. A number of communities are not accessible and in the city, residents […]
But even before the heavy rains in Belize City, torrential rains across western and southern Belize caused flooding of bridges and farms. NEMO is reporting that no homes have been impacted, but farms in the flood areas in Toledo, particularly Blue Creek and Crique Sarco Villages, weren’t spared. We spoke with NEMO Coordinator about the […]
There was a flash flood in the west on Wednesday night. Sometime after mid-night, NEMO was called out to an area in Unitedville where a portion of the George Price Highway and two houses were under two to three feet of water. According to Central Regional Coordinator for NEMO, Al Westby, the area floods whenever […]
A six-point-four magnitude earthquake struck on the coast of Taiwan very late on Tuesday night, about ten minutes before midnight local time. Centered on the eastern city of Hualien, about a hundred miles south of the capital Taipei, seven deaths have so far been reported and more than two hundred persons left injured. There are […]
Over the years, the Belize City Council and its City Emergency Management Organization has become the leading face of emergency management. The annual symposium hosted by CEMO for the last six years has covered topics from road safety to fire management. But Belize’s and the City’s primary threat remains hurricanes, and even though the council […]
A fruit and vegetables vendor at the San Ignacio Market is tonight without a roof over her head after a fire gutted her elevated wooden home this morning in the Hill View neighborhood of Santa Elena. Gloria Molina was at work earlier today when she got word that her home was up in smoke on […]
Two brothers were caught in an explosion inside their family bakery in Sand Hill, Belize District, this morning. One of them is dead and the other is hospitalized following an accidental blast that happened inside an oven in the kitchen. The IN-n-Out Bakery has been in operation for more than five years, it’s the first […]
In the west, water levels rose cutting off access at Iguana Creek Bridge to the Spanish Lookout Community. Several other villages such as Santa Teresa and San Marcos are inundated. According to Assistant NEMO Coordinator Johnny Ramclam, western Belize experienced continuous rains, which started from six-thirty on Thursday through to this morning. In Benque Viejo […]
As many as thirty-eight persons, adults and children, have been left homeless due to raging fires in Belize City. This weekend, twenty-five artists and fifteen DJ’s are coming together in a benefit concert that will hopefully uplift the spirit of those affected as well as raise money to help them rebuild their homes. The idea […]
A fire burnt out more than seven families in the early hours of this morning. Sometime after twelve, the fire started in an abandoned building on Glenn Street and the flames spread quickly. The blaze destroyed two other houses and left around twenty-eight persons without a roof over their head. The victims and residents in […]
Residents and fire victims believe that the firemen were not prepared to take on the midnight inferno. They claim that the fire truck arrived thirty minutes after the blaze started and that the trucks didn’t have enough water. Well, Fire Chief says not so. He says they were notified of the blaze around ten minutes […]
The Ministry of Human Development and the City Emergency Management Organization have teamed up to provide much needed immediate relief for the families. Today, Minister Edmond Castro and Philip Willoughby met with the victims at the City Hall to distribute some food and other necessities. CEMO says that majority of the twenty-eight fire victims will […]
Still a little shaky from Tuesday night’s earthquake and tsunami scare? You’re not alone. Nearly forty-eight hours later, emergency preparedness responders are still marveling at Belize’s close call and formulating plans and ideals for the next time. Belize is located not far from the Swan Islands transform fault which produced another knee-buckler in 2009. That […]
Vulnerable populations, such as the stevedores who were out on the sugar boat on Tuesday night, should be covered in terms of planning by their employers as well as their own personal plans. CEMO Coordinator, Phillip Willoughby also drew our attention to an erroneous social media post claiming that a tsunami would hit around four-thirty […]
