By Shirley Thomas

THE Guyana Fire Service sprang into action late yesterday afternoon to fight a fire that broke out at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Guyana, forcing immediate evacuation of the entire university campus while triggering a major power outage of Turkeyen and contiguous areas on the East Coast of Demerara.

Students attending lectures in the Cheddi B. Jagan (CBJ) Lecture Theatre recalled looking across the campus and noticing fire emanating from the old storage building at about 19:00 hrs. They alerted their lecturer, who immediately discontinued classes, and the students grabbed their bags and exited the building.

Immediately alerted, the Central Fire Department of the Guyana Fire Service promptly dispatched three tenders to combat the flames – one from the CFD and two others from Alberttown.

Twenty-five fire fighters and six officers converged on the scene of the fire. Fire Officer Andrew Holder recalls the fire fighters were at one stage challenged to source water, but fortunately found a large pond located between the Bursary and the Library, and so were eventually able to obtain water to extinguish the fire.

At approximately 19:30 hrs, the firefighters had reportedly still not gone into the building, because it was rumoured to house a science lab, thus they were forced to approach the building with caution.

The other challenge the fire official recalled the firefighters facing was the presence of a lot of flames, which posed a severe threat of the fire spreading to surrounding buildings.

Asked what could have possibly caused the fire, Officer Holder said they were still in fire-fighting mode and were still trying to ascertain what was in the building at the time of, or prior to the fire. Albeit, they were able to contain the blaze to one building, before eventually extinguishing the fire. Asked for a comment on claims made by students that a loud explosion was heard in the building, Holder said there were only ordinary combustibles.

UG Vice Chancellor Professor Jacob Opadeyi confirmed that the fire started in, and was confined to, a condemned storage bond and not a laboratory, as was the view initially held. That building also accommodated old examination papers and other documents stored by lecturers.

Professor Opadeyi expressed gratitude to the firefighters for the sterling work they had done, claiming that he was ‘very pleased’ at their response to the fire call and the way they were able to manoeuvre and access water from the pond, even in difficult circumstances.

“I am very pleased with their performance, because the danger of the fire spreading was very high,” he confessed.

The Vice Chancellor said that another serious challenge was that the fire hydrants on the campus were not working.

Asked about the impact of the fire on classes, he said it is likely to be very little, particularly on the students. However, it is expected to have emotional and psychological implications for the lecturers. Also, there will be implications for those students’ papers that would have been destroyed in the blaze, since it is required that students’ scripts be kept for five years.