Tonight a family of fourteen is without a home. Early this morning the family's home on Iguana Street was destroyed by a fire. The residents all managed to escape unharmed but they lost everything. The fire department responded quickly but it seems they were not able to stop the fire from spreading, not because the blaze was too big, but because the fire truck had an unforeseen mechanical issue. Assistant Fire Chief Matura told us that the failure was not something they could have predicted.
Benisford Matura, Assistant Fire Chief
"We arrived at number 7007 Iguana Street and found a two storey structure totally engulfed in flames. The upper flat was engulfed in flames. We got into operation and started to extinguish the fire but our unit experienced a mechanical failure with the pumping and could not discharge the second unit's water on the fire, so hence the reason we had to use only one unit to extinguish the fire."
Sahar Vasquez, reporter
"What effect did that have on the burning of the house?"
Benisford Matura
"Well, it is an unfortunate occurrence and did let the fire get away from us and rekindled because we had to send the initial unit to the hydrant and wait for a refill while we tried to extinguish the fire."
"It was in the pumping system. In all the fire truck there is a gear system that switches over from road mode to the pumping mode and it is a series of different gears and one of the gears tripped so at no point could we have dispensed the water from this truck so we had a truck filled with water but could not get the water out of the truck."
"It was an unforeseen circumstance. It is unfortunate for the homeowners that they end up with a loss to this magnitude but if both of our trucks were operating properly then we would have knocked down the fire and had less damage than what occurred. Many of the neighbourhood people were out there stating that we did not have water in the truck but just to reassure the public all of our trucks do have water in the country wide. It is protocol, it is a procedure. It is the standard operating procedure that firetrucks should not be parked at any fire station without a new tank of water."
Sahar Vasquez
"How many people lived there?"
Benisford Matura
"Fourteen people lived there. You had five adults and nine. Well, nine adults and five minors that resided."
"We have determined that it was an electrical short at some point there was an overload."
The home was not insured.
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