Former deputy headmistress of the Mahdia Secondary School, Amanda Nedd, yesterday said that the Guyana Fire Service was “clearly disorganized” in its approach towards the school’s dormitory fire which claimed 20 lives.
Nedd, an educator for nearly 25 years, told the Commission of Inquiry that the body language of the fire-fighters on the fire scene suggested that they were disoriented, confused, or did not know what they were doing.
“When they arrived it was very chaotic because it was like they were unsure about what they were doing and they were very much disorganised. It is like they were not trained to attend to this situation and that is my personal view because I was looking forwards towards a quick response which I did not get from them [fire-fighters],” the former deputy head mistress told the inquiry.
Nedd, who was also the school’s English Department Head said when the fire-fighters (both senior and auxiliary staff) arrived, they eventually left in pursuit of water to douse the flames.
“They arrived on the scene, then I noticed that they left, came back and then spent another 5 minutes and then they left again. It was like they were all over the place”, she related.
The Commission’s Counsel, Keoma Griffith then asked “So when they [the fire-fighters] left the scene for the first time, the fire obviously continued to ravage the building?”
Nedd replied, “Yes and in addition to that, they had no tools for us to try breaking and entering the building, so if they had something like a pick-axe it would have been easier for all the children to be rescued.”
She told the inquiry that if the fire service was prompt and effective, so many lives would not have been lost.
Nedd, who is now the Acting Headmistress at Uitvlugt Secondary, West Coast Demerara, recalled that on the night of the inferno she was reading a book when her husband (also a dorm warden at the Mahdia Secondary) asked her to come to the backdoor to listen to a sound that was coming from the female dormitory.
She said that her husband was in the kitchen, which is a part of the teaching quarters, when he asked her to “come and listen.”
Scary movie
According to Nedd her husband asked if she heard screaming to which she responded, “No man, probably the people upstairs are watching a scary movie.”
The educator informed the inquiry that there were teachers who occupied the upper flat of the school’s dormitory and the screaming sounded like that of a horror film.
She related that her husband convinced her that the distinct screams sounded like a cry for help as he ran out of the kitchen only to discover that the female dorms were ablaze.
“My husband said that ‘sound’ sounds like it is coming from the female dormitory and he ran out of door and said to me ‘the dorm is on fire, the dorm is on fire!’ so both of us ran towards that direction.”
“When we ran towards that direction, we saw students coming out through the middle door, some were already out while some were screaming but it did not last for long.”
She recalled that several of the female students were half naked and covered in smoke.
Asked why they (the female students) were not fully clothed, the teacher said that because the place is usually hot at nights prompting many of the female students to sleep half naked.
She explained that after seeing the girls running half naked and screaming frantically, she ran to get clothes to cover their bodies.
She confirmed that police officers were on the scene at the time, but there was no sign of the officials from the Mahdia Fire Service, as they reportedly took some time to show.
Nedd said that police officers were seen carrying injured victims from out of the burning building, when she informed them of other students who are trapped.
“I was the most senior official on the ground at the time of the incident, so I told the police that we still have children who are in the building and maybe trapped and they said that they are aware and then they start taking the ones who are injured into the ambulance which was heading to the hospital.”
At this juncture, the fire service officials arrived, the former deputy head told the inquiry.
She detailed that the fire raced toward the front of the dormitory, and eventually touched the guard hut.
The matron’s room, which also housed her children and solar batteries was ravaged by fire. Nedd had recommended that the matron and her children live elsewhere so as to avoid contact with the solar batteries where are flammable and can emit toxic gas.
The educator noted that these recommendations were made to Region Eight’s (Potaro-Siparuni) Department of Education but couldn’t say if anything was done in that regard.
She also noted that the Guyana Energy Agency had visited the dorm and had also recommended the matron and her children to be relocated to another room that was safer.
At this point of her testimony, tears started to flow as she disclosed that her son, a Mathematics teacher at the Mahdia Secondary school has suffered severe trauma as eight of the 20 fire victims were his students.
Her husband also now suffers from insomnia, she said.
Asked about her psychosocial well-being, she assured that she is fine, but her concern remains over her son’s mental health.
The media was then asked to be excused from the other part of Nedd’s testimony as it was decided it would take place in camera as the information disclosed from her testimony might not be suitable for reporting.
Meanwhile, Chief Education Officer Saddam Hussein and former Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, Mae-Toussaint Thomas, who were both a no-show at this week’s public hearing, were summoned by the CoI to appear on Tuesday October 10, to testify.
