A fair number of people – including some employees of the company with whom this newspaper spoke – have commented favourably on the grit and determination with which the Guyana Fire Service battled Monday’s conflagration at the Gafoors Houston Complex. This, against the backdrop of what, more often than not these days, is usually carping criticism of the quality of service offered by various state-run public service entities.
The Gafoors conflagration would, we believe, have been the most challenging urban fire faced by the Guyana Fire Service recently and another interesting aspect of what transpired at Houston on Monday afternoon was the presence of women firefighters working cheek by jowl with their male counterparts to bring the blaze under control. We are not sure as to the level of public awareness of the fact that women who are members of the Fire Service actually operate at ground zero, fighting fires. That is something that the chauvinistic amongst us might wish to bear in mind.
At the Gafoors site on Monday several firemen were injured and the Stabroek Business takes the liberty of calling on both the Government of Guyana and the private sector to ensure that there are fitting gestures of appreciation for the roles which they and their colleagues played in working to reduce—as best they could—the extent of the destruction.
The events of Monday, too, provide an opportunity to proffer a reminder to the private sector of what, over time, has been an irresponsible culture of indifference in sections of the business community to providing adequate fire prevention infrastructure at their places of trading. This is not to say that a modern complex like Gafoors would not have been suitably equipped in that regard. Still, this newspaper is aware of the Fire Chief’s persistent urgings that the business community make investments in fire protection infrastructure that are commensurate with their investments in structure and inventory.
We ask ourselves, too, whether in the light of the significantly increased spending on business structures, homes and other edifices across the country in recent years, we have not arrived at a juncture where it is now imperative that we undertake significant investment in the creation of a more modern fire service. If no one is suggesting that this can be done in one fell swoop (as with the Guyana Police Force, government has not been inclined to embrace the practice of incrementally building on what exists) but there is really no reason why a plan cannot be devised for creating a more modern fire service over time.
What we can be sure of is that the country—and the business community, particularly—will come under increasing pressure to insure and invest against fires in the future given, as was mentioned earlier, the fact that we are now moving in the direction of malls and other large edifices that will inevitably be more challenging to manage as far as fires are concerned. Not only is there now a need for investors to go beyond financing the erection of structures and focus as well on investing in safe structures as far as fire is concerned, but there will also be a need to ensure the electrical work is undertaken by skilled and certified electricians and electrical contractors. This brings us to the point of those still-existing fire traps, old and poorly managed structures on Regent Street populated by decades-old electrical installation, on the one hand and large amounts of combustible stock, cocktails for fires which, on their day can take an entire block on Regent Street.
If there are a host of lessons that can be learnt from the Gafoors fire we can do no more than hope that the government and the business community would, for a change, respond to those lessons.
