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. She also said she does not believe there are enough staff to work the division, as sometimes one person would be on duty and would be required to operate the switchboard, observe the monitors and keep records.
The post Charles first observed the fire from faces the prison yard and gives a direct view of the Capital A and B divisions. Charles related that she ran back to the front of the building to alert her supervisor and another staffer who was on duty that there was a fire at the new capital building, so that the relevant authorities could be informed. On her way there, she informed the Chief that there was a fire in the compound. Back in the ops room, she proceeded to sound the siren, which alerts ranks in the prison yard that there is an emergency.
Under cross-examination by attorney Melvin Duke, who is watching the interest of now deceased prisoner Anthony Primo, Charles said she had made contact with Superintendent Nicklon Elliot via radio set about two minutes after she saw the fire, (on her way back to the ops room according to her evidence in chief) to inform him there was a fire in the prison yard.
When Deputy Director of Prisons Gladwin Samuels appeared, following his testimony that he saw the fire at the hole in the wall of the Capital B division and made a call for fire extinguishers to be brought, he was asked if any instructions were passed to ranks to make contact with the ops room. Numerous witness accounts have indicated that according to the standard operating procedures (SOPs) of the prison, the ops room is required to make contact with the prison service in the event of a fire.
Samuels indicated that Officer-in-Charge of the Prison Kevin Pilgrim and Superintendent Elliot were around and so they would have initiated that process. He said Pilgrim, shortly afterwards, had communicated to him that contact was made and in under a minute after receiving this information he heard the siren go off.
According to Pilgrim’s testimony, it was Superintendent Elliot who made contact with the ops room, advising them of the fire in the Capital B division. Pilgrim related that after that first fire was extinguished and the other fire started in the A division, he went to the office himself and instructed the officer to sound the siren. He also asked if a report had been made to the Guyana Fire Service (GFS) and was told yes.
According to the testimonies of all the prison officials to whom the question has been posed thus far, if, after the siren is sounded, another fire is observed, it is required that the siren be sounded again. Nowhere in Charles’ testimony did she indicate hearing the siren being sounded prior to her arrival back in the ops room, to possibly signal that there had been another fire. She noted too that she had not seen any fire before the one at Capital A.
The GFS, who Charles said was contacted at 11.04, arrived at 11.26, according to her records. She explained that the firefighters positioned themselves at the window so they could document the arrival of the authorities and so she was able to see when the fire truck arrived.
Disparity
While the arrival time reported by the GFS is just one minute off of the prison records (lead Firewoman Sophia Boucher reported that the first tender arrived at 11.25), there is a great disparity in account of the time that contact was allegedly made with the entity.
It has been reported that the GFS and the Guyana Prison Service have a direct line. This means that when the phone is picked up, contact is immediately made. According to Boucher, however, to whom the report was made on that day, the Fire Service did not receive a call until 11:18.
(However, Garfield Benjamin, Section Leader of the GFS and one of the first responders on the scene, had testified before the commission that it took his crew approximately 20 minutes to arrive on the scene because of the obstruction of traffic.)
According Boucher’s records, which were presented before the commission, the first fire tender to arrive at the prison had reported mechanical problems just a few minutes before its arrival there.
Attorney Glen Hanoman had previously raised questions about the authenticity of the log book, as the first entry was made on March 2, the first day of the prison unrest. Hanoman suggested to Boucher that the contents of the book were fabricated for the sole purpose of being presented to the Commission and that another book, detailing the true events, exists, but these allegations were denied.
Also testifying yesterday was prison officer Lamon Tucker, who manned the Observation Post 1 on the evening of March 2, and made contact with the Duty Officer when he observed a fire at the Capital A division. Tucker was also present in the compound on the morning of March 3, but said he was in and out of the prison yard, and could not recall seeing any commotion.
