The Independence Day fire on the island of Caye Caulker, which broke out on one of the village's main streets displaced 14 residents, including men, women, and children. And, the greatest tragedy is that Elmer Chub perished in the flames.
And Chairlady, Seleny Villanueva-Pott, said that BEL is a big part of the blame, because when the first responders arrived on the scene, the electrical lines were live and on fire. BEL needed to cut the power, before they could start to douse it with water.
She said that she then ran to the ranking BEL employee from their Caye Caulker substation asking him to urgently cut the power.
According to the Chairlady, because of protocols, that BEL employee had to get permission from his superiors at the Central Office in Belize City. And allegedly, as much as 20 minutes of valuable fire fighting time was lost.
So, what is BEL's response to this catastrophic lack of urgency? We spoke Dawn Sampson, the General Manager of Employee and Corporate Services, this evening. Here's how that conversation went:
Dawn Sampson-Nunez - GM, Employee & Corporate Services, BEL
"We had a loss of life. No one wants that. So, of course, we join the community in expressing condolences to the family of Elmer Chub. Now, as I said, we join the community in wanting to find out exactly what transpired. In the event an incident of this nature should happen again, what is it that we can do to help improve our response in these situations. What that has meant for us is that we have initiated an investigation. We're in the process of carrying out that investigation, and the key focus for us is, how did we respond? And we're also reviewing our response protocol. The object is to try and identify specific measures that we can take to improve our overall response. Now, having said that, I'm sure you'll agree with me that it's important that we have a complete and full understanding as to what transpired, what role did all the first responders play in this incident. And so, what is critical for us, we're waiting for the report from the Fire Department, the official report to determine exactly what transpired."
"We believe that there are improvements that we can make to our response protocol. Now exactly what the specific measures that we will take, the technical guys are looking at that. And we will determine what those specific measures will be."
"We had made a previous comment to the village council that we would establish a presence on the island. We take our commitment to continuously identify way to improve service to customers and our communities very seriously. So, we have made previous commitments to deploy, to permanently have a line crew on the island. And something that we have expressed to the Chairlady of the village council, that we will have that in place by October of 2019."
Islanders tell us that there were other buildings in close proximity to the fire, and they were only spared from what could have become a block fire because they were all made of concrete.
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