Fire Destroys Three Business in San Pedro

Fire officials are investigating the cause of a fire that destroyed three businesses in San Pedro on Tuesday night. The blaze was first seen around nine o’clock, coming from Brunolitos near the park on Front Street. The Belize National Fire Service hasn’t released official details yet, but News Five spoke with two people who helped out. Here’s News Five’s Marion Ali with the report.

 

Marion Ali, Reporting

A fire destroyed three businesses in San Pedro on Tuesday night. The blaze started at Brunolitos and quickly spread to two neighboring businesses. Coast Guard Acting Commandant, Lieutenant Alma Pinelo, was one of the first responders and joined the bucket brigade when the fire truck faced difficulties.

 

On the Phone: Lt. Alma Pinelo, First Responder

“A traffic officer, I don’t know his name, he was the one that told us to start getting a line together. And you know, as San Pedranos, we know what that means. We didn’t have enough buckets at the time. Ambergris Today had put on their live, you know, if anybody has any buckets, please bring it to Front Street. They shared a picture, that picture went viral for us to get buckets. And then we went from having four buckets to having about 20 buckets within less than 20 minutes. Some of us got out of the line, myself included, and we started ferrying the empty buckets from the beginning of the line to the sea, and there was about four, six men in the water filling the buckets with water. And then we would just bring the buckets back and forth until we did that easily for over an hour.”

 

Island Emergency Services, owned by Abner Bacab, rushed to support the firefighters by supplying oxygen. Bacab shared with us how his team stepped in to help.

 

Abner Bacab, First Responder

“A lot of the times, the firefighters, you know, as an emergency move fast to try to get to the area or location of the fire, combatting the fire. Sometimes, you don’t have time to get ready. They arrive very fast at the scene, so sometimes, they run out of air that they used to breathe. But I know that in couple instances they would breathe in the smoke or the carbon monoxide that is produced from the smoke. So, after combating the fire – the most important thing is to combat the fire and try to contain it and stop it, you know, so sometimes, they would breathe a lot of smoke and that affects them in many ways. It can affect your nervous system, it can affect your brain cells, all of these things because you are low on oxygen. Definitely, after I was there for a little bit helping trying to get some stuff salvaged from a couple of business friends that I know that have businesses there.”

 

Bacab and Pinelo both agree that the island’s fire service needs an upgrade. They also think more hydrants are needed on the tourist island.

 

Abner Bacab

“Maybe like a month of two,  we had a lot of problems within the fire department where the firefighters were complaining of the working environments: the equipment, the tools that they needed to do their work, you know, so most of it they had said was use the equipment they had got. At least it’s something, but it’s not the best equipment for our firefighters. As we know, this has been a problem for a long time now. We should see the need for better equipment and for B.W.S. to do maybe some fire hydrants or something to where when you run out of water that the fire truck could easily hook onto and then you have a source of water, or even if it’s just something to go out to the sea, something.”

 

Marion Ali for News Five.