The unsung heroes of the Ministry of Health’s fire which devastated the main building and an annex at Brickdam were the drivers, who are usually behind the scenes, and a few residents of Hadfield Street who together pulled 50 vehicles to safety as the inferno raged.
Ray Chance, Transport Officer of the Ministry of Health often leaves work at regular hours but would sometimes show up to make spot checks at nights. Thursday night was not one of the nights he went back to check, but when news of the fire reached him at home some time after 3 am on Friday, he dashed to Brickdam vowing that the damage to the ministry’s fleet would be minimal.
Chance met a building ablaze, a compound clustered with fire fighting equipment, emotional staff at every turn and a fleet of vehicles at the mercy of the conflagration.
“I knew that the keys at the gate would be in disarray and they were. The guards simply could not find them so I dashed to my office, which is external, and grabbed the spare keys that I have for emergencies,” he related yesterday.
The chaotic scene he found on his return from the office threw the relatively calm Chance into a panic.
“Everyone was running wild and I made a mistake. I put the keys down on a vehicle in the compound and it was confusion to sort them out,” he said.
But he rounded up some drivers who had arrived on the scene and started to move, getting vehicles out based on the keys that they identified. Chance said that even the minister’s drivers pitched in and soon they were hustling vehicles out of the compound.
The scene was sheer drama, he said. He recalled that the heat was so intense it was difficult to even get close to any of the vehicles, but he was not willing to stand and watch the vehicles burn.
“I was concentrating on the ones at the back but then I remembered that we had vehicles in front so I ran to the front and jumped into a vehicle that was already alight and drove it out of the compound into Brickdam,” Chance recalled.
As he spoke two of the drivers who were part of the rescue efforts nodded saying that while they did not witness it, “Chance would do something like that”.
With the one vehicle in Brickdam out, Chance had no choice to but return to the back having realized that the two remaining vehicles in front were lost.
“Chance is the man to talk to,” one of the drivers present said declining to share the spotlight with the man who he said deserved the credit.
Chance told Stabroek News that he had never felt heat that extreme ever, but he simply could not give in and let the fire destroy the vehicles. He said that fortunately no one was injured while commenting that he missed injury.
He said about three vehicles had to be damaged in order for them to be removed from the compound because the keys could not be found.
“Break the glass, break the glass,” Chance said he recalled hearing adding that those words almost floored him. He said persons on the streets who were assisting were in a mad rush to break vehicles and get them out of the compound while he insisted on finding the keys.
In the end just three vehicles had to be damaged and that was because by then the fire was posing a serious threat. The effort to remove vehicles lasted just under an hour Chance related. He said that the majority of vehicles were in Hadfield Street and the others were at the Square of the Revolution.
He said that as far as the vehicles were concerned the ministry did not lose anything to theft since he carried out a physical check in the morning after the blaze and everything was accounted for.
“I am Transport Officer for the largest fleet in the whole country,” Chance said, adding that he had been in that position for three years, but had been with the ministry for some nine years.
At a personal level, the fire struck Chance hard since according to him it was like “watching your home burn.
“I shed a tear,” he added.
