Dear Editor,

I have been reviewing the coverage of the Stabroek News reporters of the recent fires in Guyana and I believe that the way the stories are reported the brave men and women of the Guyana Fire Service are treated unfairly.

As the result of these reviews I have come to the conclusion that the Stabroek News is unfairly reporting the events as they occur, a case in point the fire at Brian’s Variety Store at Mon Repos East Coast Demerara.

Your newspaper reported that the fire was started as the result of garbage being set on fire then spread to the store; first I would like to congratulate the smart person or persons who would set a fire so close to a dwelling.

Secondly it was reported that the building was consumed in about fifteen minutes and one eyewitness said that the fire service took thirty minutes to arrive while the owner of the store who was at home at Lusignan when he received the call telling him the store was on fire said that the fire service took forty-five minutes to arrive.

Yet the same fire service was able to restrict the fire to the building next door, further it was reported that a there were leaks in the hoses the photographs in the papers do not support this (see published photographs of the GNIC Foundry fire also).

Based on the facts above let us review from a layman’s stand-point what may have occurred.

1. The fire was burning for some time before an alarm was raised.

2. It took a few minutes for someone to react and call the fire service and maybe four minutes to relay the information to the fire service operator.

3. The fire service operator would then dispatch the fire tender nearest to the address of the call after the call is received, forty-five seconds total.

4. The nearest structural response fire station to the address of this call is the Campbellville Fire Station (several miles away) also two fire tenders from Fire Service Headquarters Water Street (many miles away also).

5. The fire tenders would leave the station in under fifteen seconds of the alarm being sounded and would have to travel by road to the address of the fire. Hence the reason for the fire tenders arriving some time after the fire is discovered and the call is made.

I deliberately make this point because as this fire was burning I was at a fire also (The Windy Ridge Blaze), this fire was started by someone setting a stolen vehicle on fire on the 241 freeway in Anaheim Hills, California. The nearest fire tender to the address of this call less than two miles away yet within a few hours the fire had spread to two thousand acres although our fire departments have more equipment than you can shake a stick at( so be thankful for what you have).

6. As a result of the above the following questions come to mind: how long did it take the owner of the store to travel from home to the fire, remember he said the fire service took 45 minutes to arrive.

In view of the above I hope that all would appreciate and support the brave men and women of the Guyana Fire Service as they celebrate their 50TH anniversary this year

Yours faithfully,

Andrew Marques

Editor’s note

The men and women of the fire service undoubtedly perform heroically with limited resources. However that should not obscure the fact that there have been serious shortcomings operationally and in terms of the equipment deployed. In the Mon Repos case, several persons who Stabroek News spoke with said that calls were placed immediately after the fire started but the response time was still poor – around 30 minutes. Though the photographs may not show it clearly, the hoses at both the Mon Repos and GNIC Foundry fires were riddled with holes. This has not been refuted by the fire service.

Furthermore, fire-fighters lose precious moments sourcing water to extinguish fires. Once their water tanks are exhausted they seem not to know authoritatively where to draw water from. As the photograph on the front page of the March 12 edition showed, residents of the community also helped firemen to connect hoses, and in other ways.