You'll also remember that the Caye Caulker Village chairlady mentioned that the enthusiastic residents of the island got in the way of the firefighters. They were trying to render aid, and in their frenzied haste, they broke the delivery mechanism for one of the water pumps on the fire truck that was first on the scene. The firefighters had to bring their back up truck which was parked nearby to take over.
This afternoon, the new fire chief, in his debut interview with the press, discussed the incident. He told us that his firefighters are hoping that the enthusiastic residents will still try to help, but will allow them to take lead, without frustrating their efforts to do their jobs:
Colin Gillett, Fire Chief, National Fire Service
"There is actually video footage that when the fire truck pulled up to the scene, the civilians were already out there and they, I'm guessing, in their enthusiasm they started to pull the hose, the levers which the lever that they pulled to engage the pump, they broke it. There is a process, you have to pull one, push one - they pulled it too hard, broke it and thinking it was engage they started to stomp on it with their feet the other one and after that they came with a hammer and they actually broke off two other levers."
Reporter
"In cases like these what would be your advice to the public? I know that they were enthusiastically frenzied in wanting to give assistance and render air."
Colin Gillett
"What we are doing is we are going to work with the Caye Caulker Village Council and they have agreed to find and identify persons to be part of the volunteer brigades so when we have fire like this they will be able to step in the action and know how to work the trucks, know what hoses to pull because a lot of the hoses that they were pulling where not for that section. It was for the other one in the back. There is a lot of training that we are going to step out and about to do. Everybody can be a fire-fighter with the right training that we can provide."
Reporter
"In terms of that type of assistance, any caution that you might want to give to the public in terms of that kind of behaviour?"
Colin Gillett
"We are always grateful for the assistance that we get and we know the public, especially on the islands are a very close nit community, that's why you could see them come out with their buckets to try to help. What I would like to tell them is let us get on the scene and let the professionals at least start to pump the water and then you can help us by holding and stretching the hose and certain things."
And a small correction, in our story, we said that there were 10 families displaced. That's the number we were given on the island, but this evening, NEMO said that the 14 persons negatively affected only add up to 4 families.
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