As testimony continued yesterday at the third public hearing in the presidential inquiry into the Mahdia dormitory fire, the proceedings were disrupted by a power outage.
Giving evidence at the time was Guyana Fire Service Sub-Officer, Ryan Scott.
He began by informing the hearing that the Mahdia Fire Station where he is currently stationed, consists of eight trained fire-fighters along with 16 auxiliary personnel who are called upon to volunteer in the case of an emergency such as a fire.
Scott, who is head of the Operations Department, and an employee of the Guyana Fire Service for the past 20 years, said that when he took over the station in 2022 there were auxiliary fire personnel instead of trained fire-fighters, a circumstance which eventually changed.
Asked by Commission counsel, Keoma Griffith, how competent these auxiliary fire-fighters were, Scott replied that the personnel, who are also residents of Mahdia, had undergone “a crash course in firefighting.”
At this point, Griffith enquired of the Sub Officer, how effective these persons were in terms of fire-fighting to which Smith responded that they are assessed based on their performance.
He explained that the auxiliary fire-fighters did no theory assessments but practical assessments and based on their performance they were selected to assist senior staff members on duty in event of any fire or emergency.
On May 21 Scott recalled that about 23.12 hours he and his team received information that the dormitory was on fire. In response, they all quickly gathered their equipment and headed over to the scene which was about a mile and a half away from the Mahdia Fire Station.
The officer recalled that when they got there, the building was already engulfed in flames. He described the situation on the ground as “chaotic.”
“There were a lot of people there along with vehicles but at that point, we just had to maneuver around the situation”, he said.
At this point, the witness’ testimony was interrupted by a power outage forcing the termination of the day’s proceedings. On this note the CoI’s Secretary, Javed Shadick, informed the media that the commission would resume hearings today.
Stabroek News had reported that Fire Inspector Javid Mohamed during the second public hearing, testified that the Mahdia school dormitory fire was definitely not of electrical origin, but likely maliciously set ablaze.
Further, there were no smoke detectors or alarms in the building based on investigations and inspections done by the GFS. He also stated that it was a herculean task for the fire-fighting team to quell the flames due to the intensity of the blaze.
After the fire of May 21, Mohammed and his colleagues were dispatched to Mahdia from Georgetown to conduct site inspections and investigations. Some six investigators were on site assessing the scene to see if there were any exposed electrical wires but instead discovered what were deemed to be fire ignitors.
In the days after the fire, it became known that the Mahdia fire service had made recommendations twice for protective grills on the dorm to be removed to no avail. It was also later learnt that a report commissioned by the Ministry of Education to assess dorms had found that fire safety measures were absent at the Mahdia Secondary School girls’ dorm. That report was available in May, 2022.
