– ‘B’ Division Fire ChiefCompton Spartan, Officer-in-Charge of the Guyana Fire Service (GFS)’s, ‘B’ Division, has stated that a stove which was left on, at very low heat, was determined to be the cause of the massive fire that gutted the popular Jokewesan’s Creole Restaurant and Bakery of Charlotte Street, New Amsterdam last Saturday morning.Additionally, the blaze gutted another building and the two occupants were indeed lucky to have escaped unhurt. Courts’ New Amsterdam store which is located not too far away from the Charlotte street inferno was also scorched, but there was no significant damage to the building.Spartan was at the time addressing members of the media during a press conference at the N/A Fire Station yesterday.“The fire started due to a stove that was left on. The place consisted of a restaurant where the occupants thought it was okay to turn down the flames of the stove to heat up whatever contents were in the pot. That is a very dangerous practice!” Spartan exclaimed.“You should remove the valve from the stove. In that case,Cheap Jerseys From China, this was not done and that caused the fire, because obviously there was heat,NFL Jerseys China, oxygen and elements to cause the fire and what happened is that the contents of the pot boiled down and at 3 o’clock no one was around and it started to feed on the oxygen and …because of carelessness…that is something that we were trying to explain when we were doing our checks.”Spartan noted that he has instructed his team to immediately carry out checks to all eateries and restaurants in the town and other areas to ensure they are complying with safety standards so that a recurrence will not take place.He stated that the GFS received a call at 03:05 hrs from a landline number,Authentic NFL Jerseys Wholesale, which activated the 912 emergency number and “we dispatched two appliances immediately to the scene.”He noted that after the first appliances arrived at the scene, the building of origin was engulfed in flames.“Immediately, we started to work from our tank supply and we realized [that] because of the magnitude of the fire”, more water had to be sourced. He stated that the hydrants at King Street and Theatre Alley were the only hydrants that were working at the time.Water was also sourced from the Republic Road canal.“We had to run around 8-9 lengths of hose and established another jet to the other side of the building…”He praised the fire fighters in relation to “containment” of the fire.“The water tenders pump at 250 gallons per minute. Any fire that bursts out of a building will be very hard to contain with that amount of water unless we access water from the fire hydrants. I think the firefighters did a good job, taking into consideration the types of buildings in New Amsterdam.”The GFS, he added, operates under Standard Operational Procedures (SOPs) and appliances are quickly dispatched immediately after fires are reported.He noted that any emergency telephone call to the N/A Fire Station (or any other for that matter) from a landline, will be routed immediately to the N/A Fire Station. However, cell phone calls will go directly to the Georgetown Operations Room,Cheap Jerseys From China, after which they will re-route the call to New Amsterdam. All SOPs, he added,China Jerseys, during that fateful night, were followed.He said that it is the responsibility of the GFS to check the hydrants to ensure they are working and to report to the relevant authorities if they are not.“Sometimes people who do construction work and so on—garbage and so, on, pile up all these stuff on the hydrants and cover these hydrants causing problems for us when a fire breaks out. So yes,Cheap Jerseys Online, we face some of those challenges.”Hydrants are checked every 3 months, he said. The officer said that the majority of the ground hydrants in the town are functioning. However, most of those hydrants above ground level are non-functional.Spartan said that the Courts Furniture Store,Cheap NBA Jerseys Wholesale, which is a wooden building, was saved, due to the hard work of his firefighters.Police from the Central Police Station were first on the scene in large numbers and cordoned off the area for fear that a burning Courts building would result in widespread looting.
