One of Mr Clement Rohee’s earliest and most commendable initiatives after being appointed Minister of Home Affairs was to re-establish the Fire Advisory Board in October 2006. The ten-member board, which had not functioned for several years, derives its authority from the Fire Prevention Act.
Chief Fire Officer Mr Lawrence David said then that the Guyana Fire Service had been conducting campaigns to inform the public about its role in conducting inspections and making recommendations on measures to promote fire safety. He acknowledged though, that “Having considered the results from our efforts to promote this culture of safety, we are forced to admit that much more work needs to be done.” David said the non-compliance and violation of recommendations have become “habitual.”
Non-compliance is not only habitual but deadly and costly as well. At his 2008 end-of-year press briefing, Rohee disclosed that the Fire Service responded to 1,245 reports of fire − an average of over three per day. Eleven persons died and another 405 were left homeless as a result of fires. He also admitted that the Fire Service “will continue to face the challenge of inadequate fire-fighting appliances, the distance of fire scenes from the stations and the strong suspicion that persons have been using fires to settle scores.”
This country has a serious fire safety problem and a major area of neglect is the safety of public buildings. The most tragic recent case was the burning to death of three pre-teen girls in the female dormitory of the Waramadong Secondary School in Cuyuni-Mazaruni Region on August 31 last year. The secondary school is responsible for educating 450 children who come from a number of Amerindian villages in the Mazaruni basin. The catastrophe could have been worse.
There was a near calamity when the male dormitory of the Bartica Secondary School was destroyed by fire only eight months earlier in December 2007. Luckily, no one was injured and the rest of the school was saved through the efforts of residents who formed a bucket brigade. Again, students were lucky not to have been affected by the fire that razed a dormitory at the President’s College in April 2004. The Observation Ward of the Georgetown Public Hospital and other facilities were burnt down by a fire allegedly set by a mentally ill patient in August last year.
Distance has been another problem. In a fire last month at Dundee, Mahaicony, a fire tender had to travel from the Blairmont Sugar Estate, 48 km away, taking half an hour to reach the scene – a long time when a house is on fire. There is also a problem of water supply. Four persons were burnt to death when fire swept through their heavily-grilled house in Charlotte Street, New Amsterdam in January this year. Although Fire Service tenders arrived promptly at the scene, their water was quickly exhausted. The service subsequently acknowledged that water was not available from nearby hydrants and a canal had to be cleared of overgrowth and garbage before enough water could be had from that source.
Arson, though, is probably worse than accidental fires. Last month five members of a family narrowly escaped death when the head of the household set their house on fire at Miss Phoebe, Port Mourant, Corentyne in an attempt to kill them.
One of the tasks envisaged for the Fire Advisory Board was to consider the resuscitation of the defunct “Auxiliary Fire Brigade” which could provide a pool of voluntary reserve fire-fighters in communities across the country. Mr Rohee would do well to expedite the re-establishment of that brigade, as energetically as he has done for community policing groups, to promote fire safety.
