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A WAKE-UP CALL!
The picture in yesterday’s front page of Kaieteur News should be a wake-up call for the Ministry of Public Security. The picture showed three fire tenders fighting a fire at one of the largest businesses in Guyana.
If a small house is on fire, then three fire tenders should be able to contain the fire from spreading too far. But three fire tenders are not going to contain a fire of the size that destroyed the Gafoor Complex on Monday. A fire of that size needed about ten fire tenders.
Forget about the hoses that had holes. These hoses are expensive and even in America the hoses have leaks. The holes in the hoses were not a factor in containing the fire. The lack of fire tenders were.
This is not about casting blame. It is about examining what can be learnt from this terrible experience.
It was always going to be difficult to control that fire. After a fire reaches a certain stage, it usually is not easily contained and has to burn itself out. In such circumstances, the strategy is not to put out the fire but to contain its spread.
Sixteen bonds were destroyed in Monday’s fire at Houston. These bonds, given the materials that may have been in some of them, would have been difficult to save even with ten fire tenders. But there was no way that the shopping complex at the front of the bonds should have suffered the extensive damage that it did.
The Ministry of Public Security must carry out an analysis as to why there were only three fire tenders at one stage fighting such a huge fire. It must determine just how many tenders can respond to an industrial fire in the future. And one hopes there are no such fires in the future!
The Ministry of Public Security must undertake an assessment of the readiness of the fire service to respond to fires in the commercial and industrial districts of Guyana. If there were other businesses nearby to the Gafoor we may have been looking at a far more calamitous situation.
There are some reporters and news houses that are saying that hundreds of millions of dollars were lost as a result of the fire. Well, Kaieteur News got it right! It was billions in losses that were suffered as a result of the fire. This, therefore, was a massive loss and must count as one of the most costly fires in the history of Guyana. It will have an economic impact because many other hardware stores source their supplies from Gafoor’s.
The Ministry of Public Security therefore needs to undertake an assessment of just what are the fire-fighting capabilities in industrial and commercial areas. If the capabilities are weak, the Ministry needs to inform the business community so that they can take their own action to provide some sort of fire-fighting response.
This brings us to the question of zoning. There are many business places popping up in residential areas. There are all sorts of businesses being established in residential areas. This increases the risk of homeowners and also increases their insurance premiums. A business burning in a residential area will cause serious collateral damage.
The government has to seriously look at this problem. It has to have separate areas for businesses and for residential areas. This would allow for better fire-fighting planning because there can be special fire units established to respond to commercial and industrial fires while the regular units can be maintained for residential areas.
But if there is no distinction between commercial and residential areas, this makes planning very difficult because no fire service in the world can afford to retain a fire fighting fleet to fight both industrial and residential fires in the same area. Commercial and industrial fires require a large number of fire tenders and such fleets are too large and unaffordable for residential areas.
It is time that zoning is strictly enforced in this country. Monday’s disastrous fire is a wake-up call for all of Guyana.
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