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Crane fire had electrical origin
– Fire Chief insists everything possible was done
A fire which destroyed a Crane Housing Scheme, West Coast Demerara, residence on Tuesday was of electrical origin.
This disclosure was made by Fire Chief, Marlon Gentle, who said yesterday that it has been determined that an electrical short circuit triggered by an internal power problem was the cause of the fire.
Fire Chief, Marlon Gentle
Seven persons have been left homeless as a result of the fiery destruction of the Lot 14 Crane Housing Scheme domicile. The blaze erupted some time after 14:00 hours Tuesday.
According to the Fire Chief, while there have been some concerns vocalised about the fire fighting tactics employed at the scene, he is confident that the best was done given the prevailing circumstances.
A fire tender from the Leonora Fire Station, West Coast Demerara, was the first to respond to the early afternoon fire, about 40 minutes after the fire started.
In addition to a hose connection problem, which saw a considerable amount of water contained in the tender being wasted, the fire service officers were also faced with a malfunctioning pump.
This ultimately prevented them from extracting water from a nearby trench in order to douse the burning house. Gentle said that he was informed that the water level in the trench was low thus resulting in too much slush being extracted causing a mechanical malfunction of the pump.
This state of affairs while unfortunate is not always preventable since according to Gentle there are times when the work of fire officers is merely reduced to containment rather than saving a structure on fire.
“A fire unit getting to a scene after a fire would have been burning for more than half an hour would have observed that nothing else could have been done to save that building,” explained Gentle.
He said, too, that the distance a fire tender travels to reach certain fires, which at times could be as much as 15 to 20 miles away, is akin to “a miracle to go and still see a building standing.”
“Under the circumstances I am satisfied with what they (fire officers) did. The elements were against them; they had no control over what was in the trench…they had no control over the distance they had to travel (and) when they got there they made a judgement call as to what would be their course of action,” asserted the Fire Chief.
He noted that a contingency plan was engaged whereby another tender was summoned thus preventing the fire officers already on the scene from putting their failed pump under further duress. It is his belief that even if all had gone well when the first fire engine arrived, the situation would not have been any different in terms of preventing the destruction.
He noted that the expected resort of any Fire Unit in such a situation would be to engage containment activities with a view of ensuring that the fire does not spread. And there were just such concerns amplified by residents even as they awaited the arrival of a second Fire tender to render support.
The Fire Officers in fire fighting mode.
Gentle said that while “I can understand persons’ concerns that the fire might spread, I think the officers (had) already made the judgement to douse the other buildings (neighbouring houses) that got slight damage…so you go for containment if the need is not high.”
He further expounded that although the situation was not ideal it certainly wasn’t a case where the fire unit arrived without water.
“It is not a case that there was no fire fighting activities but the continuous fire fighting activities were hampered slightly by the damaging of the pump…and the pump is the most important fire fighting tool,” added Gentle.
“The course of action that they (fire fighters) took I think was sound to save further damage to equipment…We have got to be cognizant that these equipment are very costly and they are susceptible to damage easily and so we have got to be pennywise when applying certain fire fighting tactics especially in these outline areas,” Gentle explained.
Fire fighting, according to him, is not a “nice, rosy, ideal condition where we have a nice pool somewhere…if that were the case of course the action would have been different.”
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