The Royal Castle fire
Editorial
Stabroek News
November 16, 2003
A press release issued by GINA at 7:07pm on Friday evening, headed 'Fire Chief clears the air on Lombard Street fire,' reported Mr Carlyle Washington as blaming the rapid spread of the blaze which consumed three business premises on combustibles stored in the buildings, on the north-eastern breeze and on the fact that Auto Supplies was constructed of pitch-pine. Half-way down this communication, GINA did report the Fire Chief as admitting that there was a shortage of water, but went on to say "that the determination of his fire-fighters should be commended."
In further revelations, GINA informed us that after the water from the fire tenders had been exhausted, the Land Rover from LBI went to pump water from the South road canal, and "realizing that other measures had to be taken to contain the fire, fire-fighters then went to the Georgetown Stelling to source water from the Demerara River." Simultaneously, the release continued, "a vehicle was dispatched to the Shelterbelt to have the water pressure increase[d] to the fire area." It seems that water was not available in the fire hydrants, because the pressure was too low.
Well assuming that this represents accurately the sequence of events, the first question that will come to everyone's lips is why in the name of Methuselah did the Guyana Fire Service have to send a vehicle to the Shelterbelt to have the water pressure increased. If GINA has reported him correctly, Mr Washington's explanation was that the telephone system in the area had been disrupted. Are we to suppose then, that the senior officers of the fire service in a combustible city like Georgetown, which boasts a long history of devastating fires, really have no back-up communication system when the telephones are down? (We are presuming, of course, that they really are equipped with cell phones, and that that service too was out of commission. If they do not have cell phones, then someone in authority has some answering to do.) Do they not, for instance, have radio sets in their cars? What exactly did the senior officers do to communicate in the days when the land-lines rarely functioned, and mobile phones had not been invented yet?
And the citizens of Georgetown want to know why it is that only after the water in the tenders had been exhausted, that a vehicle was sent to the Shelterbelt to have the water pressure increased. Exactly what emergency plans does the GFS have in place in relation to the utilities in the event of a potentially dangerous fire? Is Mr Washington (or his deputy or whoever else is in charge for the night) not contacted by his officers immediately after a fire in a critical area starts, and are there no standing procedures for contacting Guyana Water Inc and Guyana Power and Light to cut power to an area, and increase water pressure even before a fire has metamorphosed into a conflagration?
Where the latter utility specifically is concerned, Mr Washington was reported by GINA as saying that his fire-fighters couldn't start to douse the Royal Castle building immediately, because of the live electrical wires. So exactly when, citizens are dying to know, did the relevant officer in the GFS make contact with GPL to get the power cut? Did they treat that with the same amount of urgency as they did the matter of the water pressure?
It might be observed in passing, that the GFS should never treat a fire in this area lightly even if they think it may not become a major problem. This is not just because it happens to be a central business location - although that is reason enough - but is also because it is across the road from the Parliament Building, our leading democratic institution, and one of the oldest public edifices this capital can boast.
Well, apparently unfazed by the shortage of water, Mr Washington still feels apparently that his fire-fighters should be commended for their determination. Without water, however, it really doesn't matter how determined his people are, because they really won't be able to do their job. In our Friday edition the Stabroek News reporter wrote that at one stage, "The firemen... looked helpless, some of their hoses lay limp on the ground and members of the crowd began to hurl derogatory remarks." In our edition yesterday, we reported Mr Mohamed, owner of Mohamed's Enterprise as being less than complimentary about their efforts.
Mr Mohamed had other observations to make. His description of the fire service response, for example, was "one hose, one truck and hardly any water..." He added too that the fire-fighting team comprised less than four men. Mr James, the owner of Auto Supplies, said that after half an hour there were still only one or two hoses. If this is indeed so - or even approximately so - it is a disgrace. In 1803, after Georgetown's first fire regulations were introduced, there were two fire engines in the town, each manned by an engineer and two assistants. Are we to believe, therefore, that two hundred years ago, when the capital was a mere fraction of its present size, the authorities could deploy two engines and six men in the event of a fire, whereas now as a first response to what had the potential to become a major conflagration given all the factors which Mr Washington listed, we can only muster one engine with perhaps around four men?
And as for the Fire Chief's reported explanation for the rapid spread of the blaze, one can only say that the north-east trade winds blow most of the year round in Georgetown, and one would have thought that the fire service would by now be in the habit of taking that into account when devising fire-fighting strategies. Furthermore, this is still a wooden city, and most older buildings are made of pitch-pine. And as for the matter of combustibles being stored on business premises, that is surely to be expected. The real question is whether despite all of those factors, the fire could still have been contained at an earlier stage had there been sufficient water, enough equipment and more fire-fighters available, as well as better co-ordination with the utility services. On the basis of the present evidence, the answer would appear to be in the affirmative.
After a disastrous Georgetown fire in 1864, the Gazette wrote: "The Fire Brigade, such as it is, did as well as could have been expected from its limited capabilities." Quite so.