— when responding to a blaze, says fire prevention officer

MANY burning questions relating to the operation of the Guyana Fire Service (GFS) were answered by Fire Prevention Officer Andrew Holder, at the Fifth Annual Electrical Conference held at the Umana Yana last Thursday.

Although Holder delivered a presentation on the safety measures associated with solar-powered systems, several attendees steered the discussions to matters such as rapid response time, water supply tactics and adherence to emergency sirens.

Referring to the most-recent fire at Plaisance, on the East Coast of Demerara where an elderly man died and some 30 individuals were left homeless, some members of the audience queried the Fire Service’s ability to respond to a blaze fully equipped with water.
The questions were asked since many believe that the Fire Service was not quick enough to source waste and that resulted in the total destruction of the building.
In response, Holder said that one of the most common misconceptions is that the fire tenders arrive late and without water.

“A fire tender carries 450 gallons of water, that’s a black tank of water. The rate at which we have to pump that water onto that burning fire is 250 gallons per minute,” he explained.

This, he said, can only last for about two to three minutes combatting a large fire like the one in Plaisance, and the pump mechanism is so designed that it requires fluid in the casing to get started.

Running dry, even for a short while will cause damage to the mechanical seal and even possible pump failure, which is why the Fire Service makes finding a source of water at the scene of a fire their first priority.

“Please understand that our first and foremost responsibility is to find an unlimited source of water, even if we have [water]. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have [water], but the job at hand requires us to fight fire continuously.
“So, it is better for us to lose that five minutes sourcing or acquiring that unlimited source of water than to use what we have and then we all sit and watch the fire,” Holder said.
He was also asked why the Fire Service does not provide more tankers with an ample supply of water.

To this, he said: “If we receive a call of a fire… initially, one tender will roll. But then shortly after, our control room receives two, three, four calls. It says to us, this is a working job and probably it’s something big. And then our water bowser would roll with the excess of 1,200 gallons of water. That is what saved the day at Plaisance, as a matter of fact, because we sourced water from nowhere else.

THE CULTURE OF DRIVERS
The attendees also raised concerns about the length of time it takes for the Fire Service to arrive at the scene. To this, Holder blamed minibus drivers and touts who crowd key passageways.

Speaking of the Fire Station near the Stabroek Market, Holder said although the department has written to the Traffic Chief and the City Constabulary Department sits right next door, the challenge continues.
“If you’re ever around the Stabroek Market area in the afternoons, its chaos. Fire tenders with their sirens blaring have to wait until the minibus and the touts full and pack their bus and until they feel they should move to the side before they can give us the way to pass,” Holder told the audience.

He expounded further: “Time and time again, we admonish drivers since you hear the siren be it fire, ambulance or even police emergency, give the right away, pull over, stop and allow us to pass. Because when it will hit is if one day, you decide that ‘Oh, the Fire Service isn’t going anywhere’ and don’t move and at the end of it you realise it was your home we were responding to.
“Right now, we have a driver of the Fire Department who is in court with a hire-car driver because he didn’t want to move for the truck to pass, while [it was] blaring the siren.”
Both the fire prevention officer and the audience agreed that more is needed to be done to deal with those obstructing the traffic of emergency services.

WHAT CITIZENS CAN DO
Speaking on the sidelines, Holder told the Guyana Chronicle that the department’s concerns in regards to fire prevention and precaution, is not a case of the public being uninformed but rather negligent to what little acts of carelessness can cause.

“Most of the dos and don’ts as it relates to fires in our homes we know what not to do and we know what to do. However, ever so often, we tend to tell ourselves ‘I’ve been leaving my kids alone at home to run to the market for years and nothing never happen, so why I can’t do it today?’ or ‘I’ve been leaving cooking unattended to look at soaps on the television for years and nothing happened, so why can’t I continue?’,” Holder said.
He added: “Every day that we continue to engage in these aspects of malpractice and nothing happens it brings us closer to the day when something will actually happen.”
He said every home should be equipped with a fire extinguisher.

“There is no cost that you can put against the protection of your home. A fire extinguisher is about $15,000 –$20,000 the most. It is sold at most of the big stores,” Holder said.