…Gentle says priority was to save lives, contain blaze

SUNDAY night’s fire which gutted the Georgetown Prison was not “normal” and Fire Chief Marlon Gentle said the evacuation of the inmates was a bigger priority than to save the building which was eventually gutted.
When the Fire Service received word of the fire via the operations room of the Brickdam Police Station, the firemen observed all requisite protocols and during the swift activation, two fire units were dispatched to the scene, Gentle told a media briefing Sunday night at the National Communications Network (NCN) studios. “When they got there, there were four different fires at four different parts of the prisons,” Gentle related, adding that the Fire Service received word of the fire around 16:45hrs.
The prison was reduced to rubble after a prison break which started when inmates lit simultaneous fires in the buildings and one officer was held hostage reportedly by mass killer, Royden Williams. This was according to Director of Prisons, Gladwyn Samuels, who also spoke to the media late Sunday night.
Gentle recounted that when the firemen arrived at the scene, it was decided that alternatives had to be sought. He said that the firefighting role was aimed at safeguarding the exit points of the prison. He said that given the time of the day, being 17:00hrs, one would have expected rapid combustion as the prison was ablaze. The wooden sections of the prison at the corner of Durban and John Streets, as well as another wooden area close to the corner of John and Bent Streets, were set ablaze initially. Those areas, known as the strong-cell division and the condemned division, were immediately attended to as evacuation of the prisoners commenced.
Gentle said that given the large number of persons who had to be accounted for, 1018 prisoners, the immediate priority was to ensure the fire remained confined to the prison compound and, secondly, to ensure everyone exited the building safely. He said that there were several simultaneous factors which were being played out as the prison burned. Gentle noted that as the firemen battled the blaze with help from other members of the Joint Services, they were being constantly attacked by prisoners with large bricks. “There are a lot of issues that occurred“, he noted, adding that first responders would have made appropriate moves based on the situation on the ground.
Gentle described the scene as “unprecedented”, a major incident where in less than an hour more than six buildings in the centre of Georgetown were razed. Officials noted the complexity of the situation on Sunday night. It was noted that groups of prisoners who were brought out from inside the prison and placed inside the Prison Officers’ Club set fire to that facility.
Last March, 17 prisoners in the Capital Section of the Georgetown Prison died as a result of an unrest that started several days earlier .The Capital Section of the prison usually accommodates persons who are on remand for murder and gun-related crimes. Following the fiery incident, a fire-truck was placed on stand-by outside the prison for any eventualities. Later a decision was made to remove the fire –truck from the environs of the prison. Samuels told the media on Sunday evening that after any event, assessments are conducted and while the fire tenders being at the scene served a security purpose, it was also viewed as a form of provocation to prisoners.
“And, our assessment at the time revealed that the prison was calm enough to revert to the SOP whereby if there is an incident we would utilise whatever firefighting capabilities we have on the ground and also to call in the fire service,” Samuels said. Eight persons from the prison were transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC) to receive medical attention on Sunday night. Seven of those persons are Prison Officers. One of the officers, Odinga Wickham, who sustained a gunshot wound, subsequently died while seeking medical attention.