On Friday afternoon, an empty car burned at the Festival Village, sending flames several feet into the air.
Luckily, fire officers were on hand to put out the fire. In fact, they were the ones who had set it in the first place.
The demonstration drill was part of annual Fire Safety Awareness Week hosted by the Virgin Islands Fire and Rescue Service, and there were several specific goals in simulating the dramatic vehicle accident at the Festival Village, Chief Fire Officer Zebalon McLean said.
“It was done to showcase not only how we put the fire out, and not only how we rescue the persons [who may be involved], but how we administer medical care,” Mr. McLean said, adding that the fire service has 13 emergency medical technicians on staff.
‘Scaled down’
The 2018 fire safety week featured several other activities, although the itinerary was sparser than those of previous years.
“It was our doing to scale it down, because our Road Town building was damaged and it used to be the main area for the fire week activities,” Mr. McLean said. “Morality was low so it was difficult to get people to operate in zest. Responding is not the issue, but it’s a little tough when you wish things were a little better than they were.”
The Road Town headquarters remains heavily damaged, and the East End and Cappoons Bay stations are closed. The chief fire officer has said that the department only has four of the seven trucks that it did before Irma, but the Ministry of Communications and Works has committed to providing the service with new fire engines in 2019.
“So that’s something that we’re looking forward to,” Mr. McLean said. “We haven’t located the funds for broken pumps, but we’re hoping when the new trucks come they’ll have a pump or two on board.”
Quizzes, lectures
Last week the fire department also hosted several morning radio quizzes and gave safety lectures to schools and other organisations, including an “impromptu inspection of premises.”
Mr. McLean said the lectures aimed to be interactive.
“During the lecture you keep talking but give a bit of a walk through and point out [safety hazards] rather than standing in one spot and trying to employ the audience’s imagination,” he said.
Sub-officer Victor Williams added that the morning quizzes taught residents of all ages information that they may not have known, like the fact that the fire station on Virgin Gorda is the only station in the territory where firemen operate an ambulance.
“The child learned and even some adults,” he said. “Overall the fire week went excellent but we did scale down.”