Campton Sparman, Officer-in-Charge of the Guyana Fire Service’s Berbice Division has defended the New Amsterdam Fire Department’s response to the early morning fire in the town last Saturday, saying fire-fighters were professional, effective and efficient in executing their duties.
Sparman’s defence of the department came during a press conference on Tuesday amidst criticisms that there was no prompt response to the fire at Charlotte Street east, New Amsterdam, which was started by a stove that was left on at low heat.
The fire originated in the popular restaurant Jokwesan’s Creole Corner and Catering Service, before blazing its way to destroy an old wooden house next door.
Efforts by the fire service to save the restaurant and neighbouring house were futile, but the fire-fighters did however manage to save Courts Furniture Store and partially save another house.
Since then, the fire fighters have been lambasted by residents for arriving on the scene “late and without an adequate supply of water” and it has been suggested that more could have been done to save the destroyed buildings. But according to Sparman that was not the case and the record needs to be set straight.
“The Guyana Fire Service received a call at 3:05hrs, via the 912 line,” he disclosed, adding that “when we received the call we dispatched two appliances immediately to the scene.” The fire officer indicated that it took the fire tenders some four to five minutes to arrive on the scene and by that time the restaurant was completely engulfed in flames. At that point, the fire-fighters immediately started “working from our tank supply and we realised that because of the magnitude of the fire we could not have contained it with our supply of water, so we diverted to the corner of King Street where we accessed water from the hydrant,” Sparman said.
Hydrants
The town has two kinds of hydrants the fire fighters can access for water – pillar hydrants and ground hydrants. However, only the ground hydrants are functioning and they pose several problems to fire fighters. “Now those hydrants in New Amsterdam, only the ground hydrant works. We would have to access water through going down into a man hole and turning on the valve which I believe is down 9ft and that would pose a problem for us,” related Sparman who went on to say despite the difficulties the firemen encountered, they were “successful in getting access to the water and we established two jets from that vehicle which contained the fire.”
Sparman, however, admitted that it is the responsibility of the GFS to check the hydrants every three months to ensure that they are working properly, but added that his department only does so twice per year and reports to the “relevant agencies.” He added that “Sometimes people do construction work and pile heaps of stuff blocking access to the hydrants, it poses difficulties for us when a fire breaks out.”
He opined that the fire fighters did a good job in relation to containment, when the building and the destruction are examined. He explained that the “water tenders consist of 400 gallons of water and we pump about 250 gallons per minute. Any fire that burst out of a building would be very hard to contain with that amount of water, unless we access water from a fire hydrant or an open canal – which was done.”
He added, “The destroyed buildings were old and of wooden structure, so the fact the firemen managed to save Courts Furniture Store is a noteworthy feat.”
In response to claims that calls to the New Amsterdam Fire Department went unanswered, the fire officer said “the Guyana Fire Service operates on SOPs – Standard Operating Procedures which tells you once we receive a call we respond immediately; once we get a call there is a fire involving building or structure we respond by dispatching two appliances.”
In an effort to clear up what he termed as a “misconception,” Sparman revealed that the call his department received “came through 912” and was made from a landline phone. Elaborating further, he said “if the call was made from a cellular phone it would have been routed to the GFS’s control room in Georgetown because of GT&T system and the call would have then been re-routed to New Amsterdam.”
‘Carelessness’
Sparman also revealed the cause of the fire had been determined by the New Amsterdam Fire Department to be a stove had been left on at a very low heat. He stated that the investigation into the origin and cause of the fire saw the fire officers taking statements from persons around the area, combing the debris and looking for fire patterns. At the end of which “it was determined that the fire was caused by a stove left on.”
He explained that the building where the fire originated housed a restaurant where “they would normally leave on the stove and turn it down low.” He chastised restaurant proprietors for that practice, saying it was “a very dangerous practice” and he advised persons to “always ensure that you turn off the stove and remove the valve from the gas bottle.” He added, “In this case, that was not done, and that was the cause of fire.”
Sparman ventured further to say that “obviously there was heat, oxygen and fuel… the three elements needed to start a fire. What happen there, the contents of the pot boiled down igniting items around and at 3 am, nobody around, and it burst out… because of carelessness, negligence.”
In an effort to prevent fires of a similar origin from occurring in the future, Sparman says he intends to instruct his fire prevention division to carry out inspections on all cooking places in his jurisdiction to look at safety.
