The testimony of a prison officer yesterday indicated that the Guyana Fire Service may not have been informed of the fire in the Capital A Division of the Camp Street Prison on March 3 until it was already raging.
According to the testimony of operating room attendant at the Camp Street prison Esther Charles, who has been working in that division for 10 years, around 11am on March 3rd, she was with another rank in the “Observation Post 2,” located in the back of the Operating Room, when she saw flames coming from the Capital A Division. The fire, she told the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the deaths of the 17 inmates that resulted, was already at the grill, and by the time she ran to the front to inform the other attendants, smoke had started to rise from the building.
Although the Ops Room is equipped with monitors that display footage of the inner and outer perimeters of the Camp Street Prison compound, it does not appear that the officer observing those monitors at the time saw the fire.
Dekanna Benjamin, also an Ops room attendant and who was on duty during the fires on the night of March 2, yesterday revealed that there are 32 cameras in and around the compound, but a few of them have not been functional for about three to four months. While she said she does not believe this has a detrimental effect on her job, she did admit it would have some effect on the execution of her duties.
