While the Belize City Red Cross volunteers were in the Corozal district over the weekend helping those flood victims, their Belize City headquarters was targeted by burglars.
Tens of thousands of dollars in equipment were stolen from the NGO.
The burglary is believed to have taken place sometime before 3 on Sunday morning when their building alarm system went off and alerted their Security Company. The police were called to the area but saw nothing - that is because according to the Director General - Lily Bowman - the burglars made entry through the roof of the building which would probably make it difficult for anyone to see them.
Lily Bowman - Director General, Belize Red Cross
"It was a surprise for us this morning when we opened the doors and went into the lock offices - there we were dismayed to see the offices in disarray. Apparently burglars in the wee hours of yesterday morning according to the Elite Security officer must have come in through the roof - bored through my lock office and took out all the equipment from in there; computers, CPU, printers, hard drives, fax machines, radios, then through the ceiling again bored through the wall of another lock office, the Disaster Reduction Office and again they clean that out; laptops, computers, hand held radios that we used in times of disasters, all that was gone. Then they bored through the wall there to go into the finance office which is the next locked office and again we had laptops that are kept in there, those were gone. They tried to get into our safe, which there was nothing there because we deposited the little we had on Friday. They couldn't pry it open, so they just left that, but they destroyed the walls, the ceiling and equipment that they took - you know that is really setting us back tremendously because those equipment are for use in our projects that we have on-going right now and then it's all the information gone."
"Actually this is the third one for the week gone. There was one where somebody walked into our downstairs while the staff was locking up and stole out of that staff's bag. Then on Wednesday night one of my staff came face-to-face with a burglar in the kitchen area packing up things to go - he got away and then this one."
"I don't know why they are targeting us but the thing is that we can't replace these things. Those equipment that we lost in this burglary belongs to the projects that we ongoing have implementing in Jane Usher Boulevard for instance, in all the coastal communities. It's all that information that we have done since the beginning of the year gone."
"The irony of it is that we have been in Corozal helping the people who have been affected by the floods. We are out there completing assessments and making distributions of food, kitchen items, blankets, hygiene kits, buckets, cleaning items, baby kits and all that we are giving them while they are cleaning us out on this end."
"It is just very disheartening to know that we the Red Cross is here in this country helping the most vulnerable people and it is probably those same people coming to burglarize us."
So far the Belize Red Cross has roughly estimated their lost to almost 35 thousand dollars.
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