Problem within building may have caused Education Ministry fire

Sep 14, 2009 News

– Dindyal

Reports suggest that the fire at the Ministry of Education Branch in Plantain Walk, West Bank Demerara, may have been caused by a problem within the building.
This is according to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL), Bharrat Dindyal, who at a press conference on Saturday, told media operatives that the company arrived at this conclusion following the reports in the newspaper that an explosion was heard in the building before the fire started.
“We normally do our own investigations in addition to what the Guyana Fire Service would do so we would ask them for a copy of their report so that we can have an idea as to what exactly happened,” Dindyal said.
He explained that the power company will soon do a demonstration for the media in order to establish and explain how a fire starts.
“It is possible to demonstrate how these problems start and how you see it externally and people think it’s a GPL problem.”
According to the CEO, GPL currently has an arrangement with the Guyana Fire Service where reports of fire are immediately reported to the power company.
He added that the fire service is connected via radio to GPL’s control center, where if the fire service receives a report of a fire, they would immediately contact the control centre and indicate to them the seriousness of the situation.
“So if our emergency crew gets to the area first, they would normally isolate the area and allow the fire service to do their job and take out the circuit.”
Following the fire at the Education Ministry branch, which occurred on Thursday September 10th, Minister within the Ministry of Education, Desrey Fox, had urged for government buildings to be properly secured and for personnel to be adequately trained in order to deal with an emergency.
“We need to have fire alarm systems, smoke detectors and to ensure that there is proper working fire extinguishers because we really are housed in wooden buildings and we need to have our in service training and building capacity as it relates to the use of all these equipment,” Minister Fox had said.
She urged for medical kits to be made available and for staff to be trained in performing first aid.
“Suppose a fire was to happen in one of these buildings during the day or in a school or in an office, we need to have our personnel equipped to handle that.”
Kaieteur News was told that the fire was believed to have been electrical in nature, as there was reportedly an unstable supply of power in the area at the time.
The security guard who was on duty at the time the fire is said to have started, Jermaine Mahaica, told Kaieteur News that he went into work at 21:00 hrs on Wednesday, and observed that there were frequent fluctuations in the area. “The power jus’ keep going on and off,” the man recounted.
He added that at around 02:20 hrs on Thursday, he heard an explosion and within minutes, the building went up in flames.
“I hear ‘placks, placks’ in the building and I see the wire sparking and then the fire started, but it could happen from a GPL problem because the current was going on and off,” Mahaica said. (Fareeza Haniff).

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Problem within building may have caused Education Ministry fire

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