The threat of major fires is an ever-present challenge to Guyana’s urban business community and both the Guyana Fire Service and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry have told Stabroek Business that they are committed to working with business houses and with other agencies responsible for aspects of the administration of buildings in order to reduce that risk.
Fire Chief Marlon Gentle told Stabroek Business in an interview on Tuesday November 30, that while his department had seen “signs of greater responsiveness” on the part of the business community to urgings that more heed be paid to fire-related regulations, there is still evidence of a disturbing level of insensitivity to the risk in sections of the business community. “There is a great deal of evidence that some business houses are not doing enough to address the issue of safety. I think that some of them are sacrificing safety on the altar of profit,” Gentle told Stabroek Business.
Gentle noted that in recent years the urban commercial landscape had been altered somewhat by the erection of several large concrete buildings. “What this means is that a larger number of businesses now operate from new concrete structures, though, frankly, we continue to have issues with what happens inside some of those buildings. Larger buildings may mean the storage of more stock and that has its own implications for fires,” Gentle said.
Despite his concern, Gentle said that the signs were that downtown businesses now appeared “somewhat more prepared” to adhere to fire regulations. Some of the more common transgressions of fire regulations by sections of the business community include old and defective electricity wiring, the absence of fire alarms, and extinguishers, the encumbering of doorways and passageways with stock and limited storage space. The Fire Service has stated in the past that the danger of fires poses a sufficiently significant threat to the business community to warrant regulations that allow for greater enforcement of the law.
Meanwhile, Gentle confirmed that the Guyana Fire Service has been writing to the Mayor and City Council for several years regarding a number of old structures in Georgetown including in the business community. He said that while some of those structures have been pulled down several still remain standing. Gentle said while it was not for the Fire Service to advocate the pulling down of buildings “some of which may be left standing for heritage purposes” it was his concern that they be rendered safe.
At last Monday’s Fire Prevention Seminar, President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry Komal Ramnauth conceded that there are sections of the business community that “do not pay much attention” to the issue of fire safety. “We may think we are good managers, and in many ways we probably are but if we haven’t got a fire prevention programme in place, we are simply not managing our homes and businesses carefully,” he said.
The GCCI president echoed some of the sentiments expressed by the Fire Chief on the issue of the attitude of sections of the business community to fire prevention. “It does not make business sense to save money in a way that results in the building up of a risk that could destroy you.”
In his address to the seminar Ramnauth called on the business community to find out what the requirements of the fire code are rather than wait for government to police commercial houses. “If you occupy a wooden building, especially an old colonial building, you have a relatively short amount of time to stop a fire before it blasts through the wood,” he noted.
The GCCI President also called on stores and places of entertainment to seek to determine the maximum occupancy capacity of their buildings and ensure that these are not exceeded while maintaining functional fire exits and fire extinguishers and instituting fire drills for staff.
